Polygraph examiner malpractice

[lousianatech]

took a polygraph in the last week for a federal agency. was verbally told I failed and that it was one of the worst failures she has seen. goes to HQ now and I pray and wait. first of all there was 3 people, not just me and the examiner. the person doing the examining for me listed was not actually the person who ended up doing the test. most troublesome of all occurred during one of the sessions where she was asking questions. at one point she said "when you lie" and then stopped suddenly because that was not a question that was going to be asked and the last word in my mind now was the word lie. how is that even allowed? at that point I was 99% sure she was a trainee or someone trying to learn polygraphs. they looked no more than 27 years old but said they had been doing them for over 7 years. furthermore after she said I failed terribly "chart was like the 4th of July" she interrogated me for an hour and was constantly looking at sticky notes that I'm 99% sure the actual person who was supposed to do the interview wrote for her. accused me of doing steroids, marijuana drugs etc, because there had to be something on my mind to fail 2 questions. and at first she said I failed the integrity questions like honesty but then second session said yeah you failed the relevant ones every time. anyways I admitted to nothing, never gave them any new information and didn't lie. eventually the senior guy was like listed your responses sound like a robot and begged me one more time to admit something, even steroids which he said were "minor" and that would be something so small it wouldn't matter.

[George W. Maschke]

It seems quite possible that your polygraph operator was a trainee. But even if you had a senior one with years of experience, in wouldn't compensate for polygraphy's complete lack of scientific underpinnings. False positives are common, no matter who administers the "test."

You did well not to make up an admission in an attempt to placate the polygrapher.

Note that telling an examinee that they exhibited reactions to the integrity questions (a polygrapher euphemism for "control" question) in between chart collections would tend to "help" the examinee to pass by sensitizing them to those questions: the key to passing is to exhibit stronger reactions to the "control" questions than to the relevant questions.

Based on your description, I cannot conclude with any confidence what the actual outcome of the polygraph session was. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. 🤞

[louisianatech]

thank you. I guess it was just weird that after them telling me the control questions were showing feedback they jumped to the relevant questions failing the next session. they reworded the control questions but said i failed because i showed reactions to serious crimes and suitability every time.

[louisianatech]

Thought I'd add this after I remembered it.
They only told me I failed initially, later on it changed to "your file is hovering in the yellow zone. The green is pass, yellow is iffy, and red is fail, we need to you say something even if its small because you are in the middle right now," is essentially what I remember. Does this make me feel a little better, yes, but I'm still nervous as shit.

[George W. Maschke]

This latter point you mention makes me think that you likely passed, or that the outcome was at worst "inconclusive." Hopefully, you'll be receiving good news soon.