CM advice on dealing with DI results misguided

[beech trees]

deleted by author

[George W. Maschke]

Examiner,

You asked:

Are you stating that it is your belief that countermeasures will not help guilty people defeat the polygraph and your only intent is to ensure that innocent people pass by augmenting their naturally occuring responses?

No. It is not my belief that countermeasures will not help guilty people defeat the polygraph. They can and have.

Nor is it my intent "to ensure that innocent people pass by augmenting their naturally occuring responses." Our intent in publishing The Lie Behind the Lie Detector was to help protect the innocent from polygraph abuse. To that end, we proposed methods that a truthful person might use to protect him- or herself from a false positive outcome (including the option of polygraph countermeasures). We leave it to the reader to decide for him- or herself how to proceed. In addition, there is a false premise inherent in your question when you refer to "naturally occuring responses." A truthful person may or may not "naturally" produce a significant physiological response when answering a "control" question.

You also wrote:

I also noted that you mentioned in an earlier post that some countermeasures may be counterproductive to helping those innocent people.  I certainly agree with that and I commend you for your candor.  As Dr Barland noted in the "To those who have tried countermeasures" thread, there are risks.  Certainly neither you nor I want to have an innocent person countermeasuring their way into a false positive.

The kinds of countermeasures I had in mind here are the kind commonly employed by unsophisticated subjects, such as dissociation, slow controlled breathing, rubbing antiperspirant on fingertips, flexing muscles, etc., not the kinds of countermeasures explained in The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, which as evidenced by peer-reviewed research, even trained polygraphers cannot detect at better than chance levels.

You also wrote:

Though I disagree with your basic premise that innocent people need to augment their responses in order to pass a polygraph, I acknowledge that you believe it and your stated intent is genuine, in my opinion.

It is not my basic premise that innocent people need to augment their responses in order to pass a polygraph. Rather, it is my argument, based on my review of the polygraph literature, that innocent people can protect themselves against a false positive outcome by subtly augmenting their physiological responses to the "control" questions.

You also wrote:

I'm also glad you acknowledge that the implementation of countermeasures is not easy and requires extensive study and practice.

I wouldn't characterize my remarks that way. What I wrote in this regard was:

In the laboratory studies by Honts et al., about half of programmed guilty subjects were able to beat the polygraph after no more than 30 minutes of training (and, as I mentioned earlier, experienced polygarphers were not able to detect the countermeasures at better than chance levels). For persons who face a polygraph interrogation in the real world, the stakes are typically high. A person's career or even his liberty may depend on the outcome. Hence, it is, in my opinion, only prudent that someone planning to use countermeasures to protect himself against a false positive outcome should invest more than 30 minutes studying and practicing.

I can't say how much training any given person might need to beat the polygraph. But in Honts' studies, 30 minutes was enough for about half of the subjects. One cannot know what results might have obtained had subjects been given, for example, an additonal half-hour of training.

[beech trees]

Dr. Richardson,

You are most welcome on this site, and I for one feel the level of discussion has been raised by your participation. Thank you!