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Skepticism, Censorship And The Polygraph
George W. Maschke writes "Paul M. Menges, the federal polygraph examiner who teaches the countermeasure course at the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute, has written an article in the American Polygraph Association's quarterly journal, Polygraph, in which he calls for the criminalization of public speech about polygraph countermeasures (methods for passing or beating a polygraph examination). His proposal would ban books like AntiPolygraph.org's popular free e-book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. I have written a formal response to Mr. Menges' commentary."
If there are ways to defeat polygraphs, then what makes this DoD guy think that polygraphs are in any way valid?
The bad guys will just use those countermeasures. The good guys might 'fail' when they should have passed.
In other words, by attacking countermeasures, this guy is actually attacking the so-called "science" of polygraphs.
Too bad they can't ban my built-in fascism detector. It's going off right now.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I remember seeing (in News of the Weird, I think) about some local cop that was taking criminals and putting their hands on a copy machine and claiming that it was a polygraph. He loaded the paper try with pages with "He's Lying" pre-printed on them. He'd ask you a question, hit the copy button, and there would be a page with an image of your hand and "He's Lying" written on it.
He apparently got a few confessions this way, but I believe they were overturned.
Anyways, let's not pretend that there's anything beyond Gilligan's Island science by calling them "polygraphs". They're lie detectors.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
If you ever watch "Forensic Files", you'll see that whether someone passes or fails a polygraph examination has little to do with their guilt.
The people that are most likely to pass a poly are the total psychopaths who just don't care or have convinced themselves of their innocence. The father whose daughter has just disappeared will be so grief stricken that he'll fail a poly no matter what actually happened.