Sad Stats

[Ludovico]

digithead:

Anyhow, I'll be off the board for a week or so while I travel for job talks as I'm wrapping my Ph.D. up and I need to start earning real money again. But until then, I'll be waiting for the next round of invictive, vitriol, ad hom, and snarkiness from you guys...

'till then.

Safe travels, and good luck with the job.

l

[Lethe]

I don't have anything against the conversation that has been going on here since my last post, but I would like to call attention to what I think is a very important point:

People, departments, and agencies that use the probable lie control question test to screen applicants and employees think that

it is okay for someone to lie if needed to get a job.[/list]

Now, that is a coherent idea and can be defended on logical grounds.  But I think people who are in favor of using the PLCQ exam that way need to be honest about that.  It's silly to say that "lying" is okay but "cheating" is wrong; that is a distinction without a difference, the motive is precisely the same in both cases.

So, why is someone who is willing to lie and deceive perfectly qualified to be, for instance, a police officer but someone who knows how the polygraph works, and understands that it will be much less accurate in his case on account of his knowledge, and who can't get a straight, honest answer out of a polygrapher, and therefore decides that he must "cheat" in order to get the exam to accurately say he is honest not suitable?  Why not simply educate such a person about the facts and allow him to take the test again?  Do you polygraphers even know yourselves?  If so, let us hear a sensible answer.

[Paradiddle]

I don't have anything against the conversation that has been going on here since my last post, but I would like to call attention to what I think is a very important point:

People, departments, and agencies that use the probable lie control question test to screen applicants and employees think that

it is okay for someone to lie if needed to get a job.[/list]

Now, that is a coherent idea and can be defended on logical grounds.  But I think people who are in favor of using the PLCQ exam that way need to be honest about that.  It's silly to say that "lying" is okay but "cheating" is wrong; that is a distinction without a difference, the motive is precisely the same in both cases.

So, why is someone who is willing to lie and deceive perfectly qualified to be, for instance, a police officer but someone who knows how the polygraph works, and understands that it will be much less accurate in his case on account of his knowledge, and who can't get a straight, honest answer out of a polygrapher, and therefore decides that he must "cheat" in order to get the exam to accurately say he is honest not suitable?  Why not simply educate such a person about the facts and allow him to take the test again?  Do you polygraphers even know yourselves?  If so, let us hear a sensible answer.

Your philosophical underpinnings suggest that you believe that lying and cheating are one in the same----and your questions beg...Beg...BEG.....BEG the question that you already know the answer to. Ya don't have to lie on a CQT (we don't even use the "PLCQT" term) for it to far better than chance indicate deception from a mathematical probablity standpoint. Polygraph is a test---imperfect....nonetheless a test. If you are an African American inner-city parent who has read Andrew Hacker's works on how tests in white America are unfairly biased against Black children, "test theory" holds some serious caveats. Hacker's work makes sense, so tests underwent some changes---and if Black parents aren't liking the bias, they take their kids to a school that doesn't administer such tests, or better yet---more often parents opt to home school there kids. People who don't like polygraph, should just not take the test, nor should they pursue careers that ask of highly personal historic events and behaviors.
So Lethe, the test works just as good with knowledge. Go to polygraph school and intern. If you don't want to (which of course you don't), than your hyper-probing questions involving nuance and psychological artistry are nothing more than snow balls from a bunker-----you know it, I know it---hell even twoblock knows it while on Risperdol. lol

[Lethe]

Yes, of course, I know that you don't have to lie on every control question to pass, you just need to be more anxious and concerned about the control questions than the relevant ones.  But, that fact does nothing to modify my point: that a person who is willing to lie in order to get a job is perfectly okay.

Anyway, it is true that I don't see any moral difference between "lying" and "cheating."  They're both equally culpable in my mind.  What do you see as the difference?  Why is the later bad and the former okay?  Why retest people who lie but not ones who cheat?  It seems totally self serving on the part of the polygraph community to me.

Do you have any substantive response to this?

[Paradiddle]

Yes, of course, I know that you don't have to lie on every control question to pass, you just need to be more anxious and concerned about the control questions than the relevant ones.  But, that fact does nothing to modify my point: that a person who is willing to lie in order to get a job is perfectly okay.

Anyway, it is true that I don't see any moral difference between "lying" and "cheating."  They're both equally culpable in my mind.  What do you see as the difference?  Why is the later bad and the former okay?  Why retest people who lie but not ones who cheat?  It seems totally self serving on the part of the polygraph community to me.

Do you have any substantive response to this?

Lethe, it is clear from many of your posts that "your mind" makes little distinctions regarding an assortment of moral concepts. Please keep this point on topic as it relates to anecdotally confirmed attempts by people to cheat on their polygraph tests by way of behavioral, non-compliance, and physical/mental countermeasure attempts. This thread isn't about culpability comparisons, or any sort of sanctity of truth telling---it's about cheating with unempirically proven internet monkey business on contemporary polygraph tests with countermeasure trained examiners. Your waxing poetic and moral relativism reminds me of a certain amateur poet and his thinly layered agnosto-ethical atheism.

[Lethe]

Lethe, it is clear from many of your posts that "your mind" makes little distinctions regarding an assortment of moral concepts. Please keep this point on topic as it relates to anecdotally confirmed attempts by people to cheat on their polygraph tests by way of behavioral, non-compliance, and physical/mental countermeasure attempts. This thread isn't about culpability comparisons, or any sort of sanctity of truth telling---it's about cheating with unempirically proven internet monkey business on contemporary polygraph tests with countermeasure trained examiners. Your waxing poetic and moral relativism reminds me of a certain amateur poet and his thinly layered agnosto-ethical atheism.

It seems to me that you're the moral relativist between the two of us.  I'm saying that lying to get a job and cheating to get a job are morally the same thing.  You're the one who finds some sort of distinction between the two.  Would you care to tell us what it is?  I admit that this is getting somewhat off topic in this thread.  Shall we carry on this line of discussion in a new thread?

[Ludovico]

I met yet another victim of the anti-poly-folly.

Sad thing too, because he might have done just fine without the "help" from this website.

[Wonder_Woman]

Yep, I had two this week that were disqualified.  Sad fact as they are victims from the info on this site!

[Sergeant1107]

Yep, I had two this week that were disqualified.  Sad fact as they are victims from the info on this site!

Did you have any this week that were disqualified even though they made no admissions and maintained that they were being honest?

How many of them were false positives?

[G Scalabr]

Yep, I had two this week that were disqualified.  Sad fact as they are victims from the info on this site!

If these people 'fessed up to using countermeasures, we can all agree that there is at least SOME of our advice that was not followed.

If they couldn't follow one of the most clearly stated ideas in The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, why should any of us believe that they managed to get anything else right?

There are people out there that are just less intelligent than others.

If there is a recipe that clearly states no salt is to be used, and a cook puts 1/4 cup of salt in the pot and the thing turns out to be a disaster, is the recipe bad? No, the cook is incompetent. Who knows what other parts he omitted or bastardized?

Moreover, the real question is how many of your examinees this week--both truthful and intentionally deceptive--exploded into laughter when they reached their cars to leave--after successfully employing countermeasures?

[Squeezecheeze]

Gino,

You called it correctly again! TLBTLD is nothing more than a bad recipe ! In most cases, those who try to follow it find it is a recipe for disaster.

Keep up the great work!

SC

[Sergeant1107]

Gino,

You called it correctly again! TLBTLD is nothing more than a bad recipe ! In most cases, those who try to follow it find it is a recipe for disaster.

Keep up the great work!

SC

How did you read Gino's post and conclude that he felt TLBTLD is a bad recipe?  His analogy actually implied the opposite.

I am curious as to how you reached the conclusion that "most" of the people who try to follow TLBTLD find it a recipe for disaster.  Is it because some people who admit to countermeasures (against the advice contained in TLBTLD) claim they got their information from this site?

The only way you could determine that "most" of the people who took advice from this site found it to be a recipe for disaster would be if you knew how many people took polygraphs while using countermeasure information they found on this site.  The truth is that you have no idea of that number.

How many people around the country passed their polygraphs this week while using countermeasures?

Does anyone think the number is zero?

[Twoblock]

Sargeant

They "maybe" catch one from time to time but I have logged on to this site many times a day, quite often between 1 and 4 oclock in the AM, and there are any where from 10 to over 100 guest on this site at a time. Are they here for just recreational reading? I would think not. I think one could make an educated guess as to the percentage caught using CMs when a couple of polygraphers say "hey, I caught one to day" like it's not an every day occurance.

[EJohnson]

Sargeant

They "maybe" catch one from time to time but I have logged on to this site many times a day, quite often between 1 and 4 oclock in the AM, and there are any where from 10 to over 100 guest on this site at a time. Are they here for just recreational reading? I would think not. I think one could make an educated guess as to the percentage caught using CMs when a couple of polygraphers say "hey, I caught one to day" like it's not an every day occurance.

Hi 2Block, your math is a little smokey---and I would caution you from calling your guesses "educated" when there are over 3,000 examiners worldwide---the majority of which don't make their experiences known to your greatness.

E