The problem is… the person who allows himself to be interrogated for a police investigation without saying the magic words - “I want a lawyer” - has already demonstrated a character flaw, either stupidity or arrogance or both. In that case, perhaps cold reading is as good as any interrogation technique.
But flashing lights, buzzers, or waving pens don’t distract from the fact that the data itself is useless, particularly if the person doing the questioning is required for the results to be interpreted. He can say whatever he wants - or as pointed out, whatever the police want to hear… much like some studies have shown that sniffer dogs often respond as much to handler attitude as to actual detection of contraband. And police or interrogator “gut feeling” is almost as accurate as a coin toss.
CANDU reactors use heavy water as both a coolant and moderator (this lets the reactors use non-enriched uranium as a fuel). Some of the deuterium gets converted to tritium from the neutrons put out in the reactors. If someone has a sample of heavy water from the moderator loop it will be contaminated.
Ontario Power Generation was using this incident as an example during their training on ‘stupid stuff you shouldn’t do in a nuclear power plant’ when I was there in the early 2000’s. And probably still is.
Yet another problem with polygraph testing is that the calibration process actually gives you the opposite of the results you want. Suppose the CIA is hiring for a sensitive position, and gives two candidates a polygraph test. They ask Candidate A “Have you ever cheated in school?” as a calibration question. Candidate A is, in fact, an honest individual, and answers truthfully “No, I have not.”. They assume that he’s lying, because after all, everyone cheats in school, and take note of his physiological response when he says that, and marks it down as a baseline for lying. Later on, they ask him a real question, like “Have you ever had any ties to any agent of a foreign government?”, and the candidate answers truthfully on that one, too: “No, of course not.”. That gets the same physiological response (assuming that the polygraph works) as the cheating question, which they’ve already concluded (incorrectly) was a lie. So he gets booted.
Meanwhile, the second candidate really did cheat in school, and also hasn’t ever had ties to foreign agents. He answers “No” to the first question, and really is lying. Later, he tells the truth about the second question, and gets a different physiological response. So they can tell the difference, believe that he’s never been tied to a foreign agent, and hire him.
All else being equal, who do you think is the greater security risk, the guy who used to cheat in school, or the guy who didn’t? And yet, all else being equal, the process results in a hire of the guy who did.
I was polygraphed one time long ago when applying for a summer security job.
I remember feeling very anxious when they hooked me up to this medieval-looking contraption and having rapid heart beat etc. during the preliminary questions about name, where I went to school etc.
By the time they asked about felony convictions and drug use I was much calmer, so I passed with flying colors.
I was in high school and applying for a job at TGI Fridays (this is back when they were new and there were only a few in the country and this was a brand new restaurant not even open yet).
I was going for a bus boy job but still got polygraphed.
No big deal…I was 17 and had nothing to hide.
One of the questions I was asked was, “Do you have any hidden reasons for wanting this job?” The question puzzled me. What the hell does that mean? Why would I have a “hidden reason” to be a bus boy?
So, I thought about it a bit and figured I didn’t have any “hidden reasons” and answered “no” to the question.
After the polygraph test was over I asked the interviewer what a “hidden reason” was. He smiled and said it was good I asked because it was the only question I failed. A hidden reason was like I worked for Bennigans and was a spy to learn TGI Friday secrets. Because I asked the question he knew I was not lying and just puzzled but it taught me how to defeat lie detectors…just take time and think about your answers before giving them…including and especially the baseline questions like what your name is. Sets a bogus baseline.
All seemed way overblown to me. I got the job though and I really was just a humble high school student looking for a job and not a corporate spy.
For a though experiment, let’s replace the lie detector with an alter to some sort of god who tells you the truth most of the time, but will sometimes tell you a guilty person is innocent and other times will tell you an innocent person is guilty.
You make an offering, shake the bells, roll the dice and look at the answer.
If this god tells you the right odd better than random odds, then they could be considered useful, I suppose.
However the problem is that we still have no idea the ultimate truth about any particular individual. Worse, since the answer is coming from a god, then people place more importance than if gleaning a result from a roll of a dice, but that’s essentially what the investigators are doing.
I guess we could replace them by just making Tuesday your turn in the box.
I’m not seeing anything to say that polygraphs have become more accepted since then. I just finished following a high profile criminal case in Nevada (for those interested in the personalities at least) where the defendant early on insisted on taking a polygraph to prove his innocence, and was refused. If the prosecution doesn’t want a defendant to take this “test”, its quite likely that A) they know the courts don’t support it’s accuracy, and B) realize it’s nothing more than an expensive prop used to persuade public (the jury’s) perception.
Whether the device is “useful” or is used as just another prop by interrogators has nothing to do with the OP. Reading tea leaves and using torture are also useful and used everyday around the world. Doesn’t mean the procedure has become any more scientifically accepted than it was 25 years ago. We’re still waiting for evidence of that…
As to the OP, I know of an Australian article from 2011. It is by an eminent lawyer (the author of the local text on expert evidence, has a PhD and is also a silk. The article is called “The closing of the coffin on Forensic polygraph evidence for Australia.” He addresses 2003 events - the National Research Council report and also a case in Australia called Mallard, which was the last time the issue was litigated here. The article is behind a paywall. The citation for the case is Mallard v R [2003] WASCA 296. Where the Western Australian Court of Appeal (the highest court in the state) robustly ruled against polygraphs (the evidence for and agin is addressed in the case as at 2003). The High Court (SCOTUS equivalent) did not see sufficient reason to grant leave to appeal on that point, but did on others.
They are absolutely NOT useful for the purpose being discussed in this thread. That is like saying that gasoline is useful when it comes to fires, when the discussion is to effectiveness in putting them out, not starting them.
How does the fact that the CIA and FBI uses them prove that they’re useful? It seems to me that it just proves that they think they’re useful. Unless you’re defining “useful” in some trivial way, I suppose, like “Polygraphs can be used to get polygraph results”, without worrying about whether those results are useful.
So, it sounds like they might be useful to elicit confessions, both true and false. They might be useful to pressure suspects, both guilty and innocent, into accepting plea deals when there is insufficient objective evidence. They might even be useful to browbeat job applicants. But they are not useful for their stated, explicit use, to determine when someone is telling the truth. That sound about right?
Lie detectors have the same basis in science as the E-Meter of the Scientologists. That is to say no basis at all. They may well be useful in tricking the guilty into convicting themselves but they are just as useful in bullying the innocent into false confessions. The latter does not justify any successes in jailing the guilty. That they are used by the police is bad enough, but their use by governmental departments or private companies is a national disgrace. I hate to think how many innocent people have had their careers destroyed, their lives blighted, by this piece of junk science.
The lie detector should join the ouija board as a toy for children. That is its only place in a sane society.
