On a related note, ‘profiling’ (say of serial killers) has long been debunked, but it’s one of the first things most of us learned about when it comes to so-called incredible techniques used by investigators. We also learned of the ‘lie detector’ and hand-writing analysis.
Skeptics Dictionary covers most of these topics very well. www.skepdic.com
The only thing the Polygraph is good for is either getting dudes to confess prior to screening or showing them a line at random and saying "Look the Lie Detector here has said you lied, do you want to tell us the truth?
I’ll go along with Gazwart’s last sentence. Get a self-described “expert” who talks in a convincing way and what is the jury supposed to think. Sure the defense can try to refute it, but then it becomes a matter of whom you believe. There ought to be standards of evidence and judges who understand these issues enough to disallow such testimony. I believe there are still people in jail on the basis of “evidence” elicited by hypnosis, although abundant evidence exists that such testimony is useless since a hypnotist can get a person in a trance to say anything and there is no reason to think that people under hypnosis have any better recall that conscious people.
Prosecutors will use anything that gets convictions.
I don’t think the polygraph would be good for either of these situations. I think the threat of a polygraph leading to a confession could be construed as a confession given under duress. And certainly anything that is said during an actual polygraph will almost certainly get tossed out of court long before a jury hears it.
Legal eagles correct me if I am wrong, please.
My favorite is the unshaken belief people have in fingerprint ID. The experts have to make an ID with smeared, or partial prints and pretend they have proof . The article says that experts could not agree with each other when tested, yet we think it is factual. It is another cop myth.