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Polygraph Testing - Science or BS?

JoeyDonuts

Frequencies Not Known To Normals
JoeyDonuts
Joined
Sep 11, 2008
Messages
10,536
A little by way of background info...

I lost my job in the Navy as a cryptologist due to my failing a routine counter-intelligence security polygraph exam. I was scheduled to receive follow-on training at Corry Station in Pensacola and then had a nice set of orders to work at Buckley AFB in Colorado. After I failed the exam, I had to come in the next day and pass an 18-hour long additional battery of polygraph testing, all of which I passed.

Despite this, NCIS launched a full-on investigation suspecting me of espionage based on the failed polygraph. I lost my clearance, lost my orders, and I separated from the service in disgust...but not dishonor.

It's worth noting that the investigation found no evidence of wrong doing on my part, and no charges were ever filed.

Personally, I think that polygraphy is a steaming pile of subjective pseudoscience monkey crap.

What do you think?

Regards.
 
Off the top of my head and without verifying or anything but cursory investigation: I think there are good reasons that polygraphs are routinely inadmissable in court
 
A polygraph is a weapon of intimidation. Nothing else.
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NCIS is pretty good at doing that. The several months of random multiple-hour interrogations I had to go through attest to that.

Just in case there are any federal or military folks out there reading this that have to go through a CSP - learn from my mistake.

If the examiner comes in, says you have failed, and then asks you to sign a "Suspect's Acknowledgement of Rights" DO NOT DO IT. Terminate the session right then and there and ask to see an attorney. You might have to explain to your employer or command about this, but it's better to do that than to allow these agencies to tear your life apart.

I trusted the NCIS and had faith in the process, and most importantly, I knew that I was innocent. If I had asked for an attorney, that would have FORCED them to produce any evidence they had against me (hint: NONE save the failed polygraph) and I could have conceivably maybe even saved my clearance and career. But once you decide to go along with them and expect them to do the right thing, you go off to limbo-land where clearances get suspended and careers go to die.

Don't let this happen to you. You fail a polygraph, don't explain anything, don't try to justify or figure out why it might have happened. The only words out of your mouth at that point should be "I want to speak to an attorney."
 
I'm really sorry about that Joey. I know several people in the military who have lost out on opportunities because someone in charge thinks polygraphs mean something.

Simple counter measure techniques can be used to baffle the system, and it's just as prone to letting by real criminals and spies as it is to giving false positives.

There's an anti-polygraph website that has a wealth of information on the subject, and frankly, between its inherent unscientific basis, and the methods for fooling it, it's worse than useless. It hurts people such as you.
 
People get screwed a heck of a lot more often than they would like to admit.

It really burns me that I busted hump for six years tracking the bad guys and thinking like them...and in the end I go out like a damned chump.

At least I got my honorable discharge with full VA benefits. Now I can go drink at the local VFW posts with smelly bearded guys twice my age, all of whom seemed to have saved General William Westmoreland from a VC assassination squad at some point. The VFW is a lot like a fishing lodge. Lots o' stories, and only about half of 'em true.
 
A letter by Aldrich Ames, a convicted spy who beat the polygraph twice, to Steven Aftergood, The Federation of American Scientists.

The best argument for the polygraph was offered by a wily pragmatist, Richard Nixon. Conferring in 1971 with fellow conspirators while trying to track down White House leaks, Nixon strongly urged polygraphing suspects, saying, “I don’t know anything about polygraphs, and I don’t know how accurate they are, but I know they’ll scare hell out of people.”
Source
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Amazing that a nation so dedicated to freedom would be so eager to embrace such Orwellian methods.
 
JoeyDonuts,

I'm a co-founder of the aforementioned website, AntiPolygraph.org. We're a non-profit, public interest website dedicated to exposing and ending waste, fraud, and abuse associated with the use of lie detectors. Polygraph "testing" is indeed BS. It's not grounded in the scientific method and has not been shown through peer-reviewed research to reliably detect deception at better-than-chance levels under field conditions. For a thorough de-bunking of polygraphy, see our book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector linked in my signature block below.
 
JoeyDonuts said:
A little by way of background info...

I lost my job in the Navy as a cryptologist due to my failing a routine counter-intelligence security polygraph exam. I was scheduled to receive follow-on training at Corry Station in Pensacola and then had a nice set of orders to work at Buckley AFB in Colorado. After I failed the exam, I had to come in the next day and pass an 18-hour long additional battery of polygraph testing, all of which I passed.

Despite this, NCIS launched a full-on investigation suspecting me of espionage based on the failed polygraph. I lost my clearance, lost my orders, and I separated from the service in disgust...but not dishonor.

It's worth noting that the investigation found no evidence of wrong doing on my part, and no charges were ever filed.

Personally, I think that polygraphy is a steaming pile of subjective pseudoscience monkey crap.

What do you think?

Regards.
Click to expand...

Is it bullflop...
 
Such august bodies as the American Psychological Association and the British Psychological Association have stated that polygraph findings are unreliable. I would have thought that anyone who lost their job because of an unfavourable polygraph test would be able to sue for wrongful dismissal, and should be able to claim substantial damages. Their use is inadmissible in UK courts.

Leon
 
leon_heller said:
Such august bodies as the American Psychological Association and the British Psychological Association have stated that polygraph findings are unreliable. I would have thought that anyone who lost their job because of an unfavourable polygraph test would be able to sue for wrongful dismissal, and should be able to claim substantial damages. Their use is inadmissible in UK courts.

Leon
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I believe in picking my battles. This would mean going up against the prevailing mindset in the intelligence community that polygraphs are the way to go insofaras establishing the reliability of personnel with sensitive access. I would have loved to have taken them to task, but it would have been an uphill fight the entire way. My family had been through enough already, and I deemed it was best to cut my losses and go home. Some may consider that cowardly. I do not. Plus, banging my head against the wall of the military intelligence status quo for no doubt months on end with no guarantee of result didn't sound like a particularly good time. Mr. Maschke's site will give you all the information you ever wanted to know about how our government's intelligence and cleared military folk continue to cling to the polygraph.

Hell, NCIS has a standing army of polygraph examiners...the people who make the equipment enjoy a lengthy contract I'm sure, not to mention all of the "training" that goes into making one a good polygraph examiner.

The more I think about it the more the whole damn thing makes me want to vomit bile in retrospect.
 
I just tried Googling for challenges to the polygraph in the courts, and found this case:

http://fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/croddy.pdf

which was brought by FBI applicants who failed a polygraph test.

Interestingly, the court didn't take into account the unreliability of the polygraph.

Apparently, polygraph evidence is inadmissible in courts martial:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/scheffer.html

There seems to be a large degree of inconsistency in connection with their use.

Leon
 
leon_heller said:
I just tried Googling for challenges to the polygraph in the courts, and found this case:

http://fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/croddy.pdf

which was brought by FBI applicants who failed a polygraph test.

Interestingly, the court didn't take into account the unreliability of the polygraph.

Apparently, polygraph evidence is inadmissible in courts martial:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/scheffer.html

There seems to be a large degree of inconsistency in connection with their use.

Leon
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I often wonder if part of the reason for the continued use of the device is that there are judges, testers, and other authorities who are perfectly aware it is no better than chance, but who value it as a tool of intimidation and don't want the public at large to be aware of how little confidence scientists have in the device.

Conspiracy theory mode off.
 
ImaginalDisc said:
I often wonder if part of the reason for the continued use of the device is that there are judges, testers, and other authorities who are perfectly aware it is no better than chance,
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A much bigger part of the reason for the continued use of the device is the inability of polygraph opponents to realize that polygraphs are substantially better than chance. Polygraph opposition seems to turn into a classic politically motivated false-dichotomy -- if polygraphs aren't error-free "magic bullets," then they're no better than chance.

The simple fact is that polygraphs are, in fact, better than chance at detecting deception, especially as part of the investigation of a specific incident. From a 1983 US government report (republished by the Federation of American Scientists) :

The results (for research on the control question technique in specific-incident criminal investigations) are summarized below:

* Six prior reviews of field studies:
o average accuracy ranged from 64 to 98 percent.
* Ten individual field studies:
o correct guilty detections ranged from 70.6 to 98.6 percent and averaged 86.3 percent;
o correct innocent detections ranged from 12.5 to 94.1 percent and averaged 76 percent;
o false positive rate (innocent persons found deceptive) ranged from O to 75 percent and averaged 19.1 percent; and
o false negative rate (guilty persons found nondeceptive) ranged from O to 29.4 percent and averaged 10.2 percent.
* Fourteen individual analog studies:
o correct guilty detections ranged from 35.4 to 100 percent and averaged 63.7 percent;
o correct innocent detections ranged from 32 to 91 percent and averaged 57.9 percent;
o false positives ranged from 2 to 50.7 percent and averaged 14.1 percent; and
o false negatives ranged from O to 28.7 percent and averaged 10.4 percent.

The wide variability of results from both prior research reviews and OTA’S own review of individual studies makes it impossible to determine a specific overall quantitative measure of polygraph validity. The preponderance of research evidence does indicate that, when the control question technique is used in specific-incident criminal investigations, the polygraph detects deception at a rate better than chance, but with error rates that could be considered significant.
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Emphasis mine. "Better than chance," but with significant error rates. (And technology has only improved since then,.... but the error rates remain significant.)

The report (therefore) doesn't recommend using polygraphs for screening, a recommendation with which I concur, for reasons that should be obvious from the OP. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. And let's not tell easily refutable lies.
 
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drkitten said:
The simple fact is that polygraphs are, in fact, better than chance at detecting deception, especially as part of the investigation of a specific incident.
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No, they're slightly better than chance at detecting physiological changes in a person's body which may be caused by deception, nervousness, fear, anger, or one of any number of causes.
 
No, they are very good at detecting those physical changes which makes them able to detect lying at a rate better than chance.



(And I promised myself I wouldn't get involved after the last polygraph thread...)
 
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