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Lie Detectors & Polygraphy

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Anonymous

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The reliability of lie dectector tests is being called into question. From the BBC:

'Electronic lie detectors, or polygraphs, are of little use in screening applicants for jobs at sensitive locations, says a US report.

An applicant with the proper training could fool a polygraph, the National Research Council (NRC) concludes after an extensive survey involving interviews with CIA and FBI experts...

...The BBC's Alex van Wel reports that such tests are used to screen employees at locations such as nuclear plants and bases where dangerous chemicals like anthrax are stored.'

I was also suprised to read in the report that polygraphs were invented by William Marston who created comic book heroine Wonder Woman.
:eek!!!!:
 
They've always been unreliable which is why they're not used in the UK. To fake one only requires a little will power and some forethought...
 
any first hand experience

Good old Judge Dredd had a portable one, but even he declined to use it in evidence in every case.
Does anyone have any first hand experience with these things out there in FT land?
Why are they accepted in the USA and not in the UK? Are they accepted in every state?
Usually the criteion for accepting proof in the USA is quite high isn't it?
Or have I got that wrong?
 
Niles Calder said:
They've always been unreliable which is why they're not used in the UK.

You should tell 'Trisha' that! ;) :D



(Non-UKers, the name of a talk show host who presnte a programme called, funnily enough, Trisha!)
 
Polygraphs are utterly useless. They can only detect whether or not a person is agitated and anyone can see that without a machine. If you can fool a person, you can fool the machine. By the same token a person nervous because they have been dragged in for questioning may drop themselves right in it.
 
There is no way to reliably separate out the nervous innocents from the nervous guilty;
conversely certain types of psychopathic individuals might give abberant readings which don't show up as lies, or might not even realise they are lying at all.
 
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The Lie Behind Lie Detectors

Commentary by Jennifer Granick | Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Mar, 15, 2006 EST

If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we detect when someone is lying?

Just as the space program seemed to be just the thing for combating communism during the Cold War, lie detection looks like just what we need in the fight against terrorism. The popular press, including Wired magazine, has been pretty optimistic that a high-tech replacement for the archaic and mistrusted polygraph machine is coming soon.

Last weekend, Stanford Law School hosted a workshop called "Reading Minds: Lie Detection, Neuroscience, Law and Society," where attendees took a closer look at the technology -- a look that suggests we're still light years away.

As a criminal defense attorney, I found the polygraph test useful, and I submitted my clients to testing on several occasions. There's little evidence that the polygraph is accurate, and most courts won't admit test results as evidence. But many people in law enforcement, including the FBI, believe in lie detectors, so strapping a defendant to a polygraph can be a useful tool in convincing prosecutors to drop borderline charges.

One time, I got to sit in the room as the examiner, paid by our firm, strapped and clipped the sensors to our high-strung, jittery female client. The machine looked like something out of the 1950s, with wires and electrodes connected to needles that marked variations on a roll of paper. The test measures the subject's changes in respiration, heartbeat and perspiration -- anxiety reactions allegedly correlated with lying.

In a protocol called the "control-question test," the polygraph operator asks irrelevant questions to obtain a base-line reaction, and asks "probable-lie" questions to get a sample of a deceptive reading. My client was anxious during all of these, whether the harmless, "Are you sitting down?" or the loaded, "Have you ever stolen anything?" that is designed to embarrass the subject into lying.

When my client almost jumped out of the chair when asked if she'd stolen the particular watch in question, the examiner declared that she passed with flying colors.

That was a good result for her, but an example of how far from hard science the polygraph falls. Proper protocol would have required that she not move during the test. For that matter, I wasn't supposed to be allowed in the room -- it should just be the suspect alone with the intimidating examiner. She was also supposed to believe that the examiner was neutral, rather than paid by her attorneys.

The problems with the polygraph are more fundamental than in-the-field variables such as partisan experts and improper testing procedures. In 2003, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed scientific evidence on the polygraph. The study found that there is a lack of scientific evidence that the physiological reactions the polygraph measures are uniquely related to deception, as opposed to some other psychological process, like anxiety or fear.

In the lab, with a trained examiner and a cooperative subject who is not trying to game the device by pressing his feet against the floor or squeezing his fists during the control questions, a polygraph can distinguish lies from truth better than random chance. Beyond that, it's science fiction. ...
wired.com/news/columns/1,70411-0.html
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060613210720/https://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,70411-0.html
 
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eburacum said:
There is no way to reliably separate out the nervous innocents from the nervous guilty;
conversely certain types of psychopathic individuals might give abberant readings which don't show up as lies, or might not even realise they are lying at all.

I've often wondered about this myself - I think you're right - and I think this casts a lot of doubt on the use of polygraphs. It's even possible for people to train themselves to fool a polygraph.
 
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Mythopoeika said:
... I've often wondered about this myself - I think you're right - and I think this casts a lot of doubt on the use of polygraphs. It's even possible for people to train themselves to fool a polygraph.

I've long thought polygraphs were voodoo pseudo-science. In the USA only certain federal authorities (most notably DOD security agencies) are authorized to use them routinely. I believe their main perceived utility lies in intimidating the subject, not in producing reliable indications of deception.
 
The truth about the lie detector
Features
Andrew Stephen
Monday 16th October 2006


Critics claim that polygraph testing is as credible as the tooth fairy or witchcraft. Yet the US government still relies on it to identify terrorists and vet FBI agents. Andrew Stephen on America's alarming love affair with junk science

Did ex-Representative Mark Foley have sex with teenage male congressional pages? Was Wen Ho Lee, an American nuclear scientist, guilty of espionage by passing nuclear secrets to the Chinese? Did John Mark Karr kill six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey? Was the British nanny Louise Woodward guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of the baby in her care? Was Aldrich Ames, a senior CIA official in charge of analysing Soviet intelligence, actually a Soviet double agent? Was Leandro Aragoncillo, an FBI analyst with top-secret clearance who was based in the White House under Vice-Presidents Gore and Cheney, also a spy? What about Dr Ignatz Theodor Griebl, a Nazi ringleader who fled New York on the SS Bremen in 1938?

I do not care about Foley, or Karr - who was innocent of JonBenet Ramsey's murder, as it turned out - but all the other cases have a thread in common. They illustrate a century-old American fallacy which, at long last, is beginning to crumble: that polygraph (aka lie-detector) tests actually work. Evidence is mounting that, far from being the infallible tools of world-beating American investigative procedures that Hollywood would have us believe, they have actually been responsible for countless miscarriages of justice and have ruined lives.

Ames, for example, sailed through three polygraphs before the CIA discovered that he was actually one of the worst US traitors in history. Woodward "passed" one but was then convicted on other evidence. Lee both "failed" and "passed" polygraphs, resulting in him being imprisoned and then released before being awarded $1.65m in damages by the federal government. Aragoncillo "passed" a pre-employment FBI polygraph but pleaded guilty to espionage in May. Griebl "passed" an FBI polygraph test and promptly returned to Hitler's side.

And Foley? Given what I now know about polygraphs - not least from reading a 151-page report, issued by the US government last month and entitled Use of Polygraph Examinations in the Department of Justice - I suspect a polygraph test would have a 50:50 chance of digging the truth out of him. As a thick-skinned and smooth-talking politician who lived decades pretending to be somebody he isn't, he would probably have cruised through like Ames. In a letter from his prison cell in Pennsylvania, no less an expert than Ames himself described polygraphy as "junk science" comparable with astrology; Ted Kennedy likens it to "20th-century witchcraft".

Yet nothing illustrates better the dysfunctional operation and inbuilt contradictions of US government in the 21st century than its attitude towards polygraphing. The justice department report solemnly outlines how, between March 2001 and February 2005, the FBI expanded the number of its employees liable to be polygraphed from 550 to 18,384; that, between 2002 and 2005, it conducted 1,994 polygraph exam inations specifically regarding terrorism and counter-terrorism; and that, in the same period, the FBI and two related government departments conducted 28,000 pre-employment polygraphs for job applicants. Yet I spotted a six-line item in the Washington Post a few days ago that began: "The energy department is ending required polygraph tests for thousands of its workers at its nuclear weapons facilities . . ."

In short, the left hand of government does not know what the right hand is doing, despite the mounting evidence. Eighteen years ago, Congress passed the Employee Polygraph Protection Act, which made it illegal for private sector employers to force employees to take lie-detector tests or to sack them for refusing to do so (except in certain fields, such as where private security firms were involved); Congress was thus in effect saying that procedures which do not work satisfactorily in the private sector can none the less be used by the US federal government itself.

"It's totally insane"

Last month, Professor David Lykken - behavioural geneticist, emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota and the world's leading expert on polygraphs - died at the age of 78, leaving a lifetime's work of studying polygraphy (which meant, mostly but not entirely, debunking it) behind him. His definitive verdict? "There's something about us Americans that makes us believe in the myth of the lie detector," he said. "It's as much of a myth as the tooth fairy."

The ancient rituals of reading entrails by Roman priests, the dunking of witches in medieval England, the use of rice by the Chinese to see whether a suspect's mouth goes dry during questioning - all, he suggested, were as efficacious as polygraphy. The irreproachably respec table National Academy of Sciences reported in 2002 that accuracy in polygraphy was "insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies".

Even in the milestone United States v Scheffer case in 1998, none other than the mighty US Supreme Court ruled that "there is much inconsistency between the government's extensive use of polygraphs to make vital security determinations and the argument it makes here, stressing the inaccuracy of these tests". Justice Clarence Thomas added that "there is simply no consensus that polygraph evidence is reliable". R James Woolsey, director of central intelligence from 1993-95, says that polygraphing should be "radically curtailed"; his immediate successor, John Deutch, dismisses it as "totally insane".

Yet old habits, however ludicrous, die hard. A primitive machine to measure pulse rates during questioning was developed in 1895, but credit for modern polygraphy - consisting, these days, not of jiggering needles drawing lines on revolving rolls of paper, but data that goes straight to laptops - is usually given to an oddball peripatetic academic called William Moulton Marston (1893-1947). He became better known in 1941 as the creator of the comic-book character Wonder Woman, possessor of the Lasso of Truth - which forced anybody under her command not just to tell the truth, but to obey her.

Thanks to Marston and his fantasies, the FBI started using polygraphs in 1935; according to last month's report, today everybody applying for a job with the FBI must undergo a lie-detector test. Yet the FBI itself previously told the Senate judiciary committee that a staggering 20 per cent of job applicants were "determined to be withholding pertinent information", clearly a preposterous finding. The Journal of Applied Psychology, contradicting the 95-98 per cent success rate claimed by the polygraphists, reported in 1997 that polygraphy worked just 61 per cent of the time.

This means, perversely, that it is innocent people who are overwhelmingly the victims of polygraphy. The National Research Council, a wing of the National Academies, reported last year that if a group of 10,000 people including ten spies was polygraphed, 1,600 innocent people would "fail" and two of the spies "pass". A faithful spouse who agrees to take a test because his partner wrongly accuses him of cheating - this happens frequently because of a sordid commercial polygraphy business - will see his marriage collapse if he "fails" the test. And so on.

Like all dubious science, polygraphy abounds with gobbledegook to give it spurious validity: the polygrapher, we are told sombrely, will measure pneumographic, electrodermal and cardiovascular responses by asking CQTs, DLTs and GKTs. Briefly, this means that a polygraph will measure the subject's heartbeat, breathing rate, blood pressure and sweating while he or she is being asked a series of questions that fall into specific categories. The first is a string of irrelevant questions ("Is today Tuesday?"), designed to baffle the subject, but the responses to which will not even be measured.

Then come the "control questions", which may comprise simple things such as: "Have you ever told a lie to get you out of trouble?" The assumption is that any truthful person will answer "yes", but that the very exchange will make him or her uncomfortable and elicit physical reactions against which responses to the serious "guilty knowledge" questions ("Have you ever committed espionage?" or, in the commercial sector, "Have you ever cheated on your wife?") can then be measured. Bingo! There it is: you've unmasked your thieves, adulterers and spies.

I would fail any such test

The trouble, as Lykken so eloquently spelled out in A Tremor in the Blood, is that all polygraphs do is to measure physiological reactions to verbal stimuli: fear or anger or embarrassment might just as easily produce these reactions as lying. I am convinced I would fail any polygraph test, for example; some of us are just made that way. In my case, words as harmless as "In our Washington studio to discuss this now is Andrew Stephen . . ." are guaranteed to make my heart palpitate, my breathing quicken, my blood pressure soar and my clothes soak with sweat; I would thus immediately fall into the "DI" (deception indicated) classification, yet no lie would have passed my lips.

If you are Aldrich Ames (or Mark Foley?) or the like, however, you are made differently and "NDI" - no deception indicated - would be the verdict. It helps not to have a conscience and, I gather, even to drill yourself into believing that you tell the truth. Furiously doing mental arithmetic during questioning can throw the measurements; biting your tongue, clenching the sphincter, thinking exciting or frightening thoughts, and consciously controlling breathing are all techniques that apparently can work, too.

Fortunately for the rest of the world, polygraphy has been largely confined to the US. Britain, I'm told, was put under pressure by Washington to start using polygraphy to root out its Blunts and Philbys in the 1980s, but the request was turned down after the British Psychological Society (among others) gave it a decided thumbs-down. Notwithstanding the current enthusiasms of the FBI, I suspect that Lykken's passing and the unheralded decision by the department of energy will come to be seen as watersheds in the history of a doomed American pseudo-science. Just the cue, I presume, for the Blair government to announce that it is introducing American-style polygraphing in Britain.

This article first appeared in the New Statesman.
http://www.newstatesman.com/200610160033
 
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Sociopaths will fool the test and false positives will occur as well. But who cares? New Labour is showing how tough it is again.

Lie tests tried on sex offenders

The aim is to prevent new sex offences from being committed
Sex offenders will be made to take lie detector tests as part of probation conditions when they are freed from prison, the Ministry of Justice says.

A three-year pilot project in East and West Midlands will aim to establish whether polygraph testing should be introduced across England and Wales.

About 25 sex offenders will initially take part, starting on Wednesday.

The idea was first piloted in 2003 with voluntary testing of offenders, which prompted admissions in 80% of cases.

In that pilot 90% of probation officers said the testing of offenders was helpful in assessing the risks they pose to the public.

Between 350 and 450 offenders are expected to be tested over the three-year period of the latest pilot scheme. Those who refuse risk being sent back to prison.

I'm hoping that this will be an incentive for paedophiles to disclose more information

Claude Knights, Kidscape
Sex offenders will be chosen by their probation officer, who will consult other professionals, to decide whether a polygraph condition should be included in the offender's licence.

Professor Don Grubin, who will carry out the tests, said the aim of this and other measures was to prevent new sex offences from being committed.

"Disclosures made during polygraph examinations, as well as conclusions drawn from passed or failed examinations, allow probation officers and the police to intervene to reduce risk," he said.

"Just as important, it is also aimed at enhancing the co-operation of offenders with supervision, helping them to focus on, and avoid, the sorts of behaviours that make re-offending more likely."

Public confidence

Claude Knights, director of the children's charity Kidscape, said she believed the tests could help to assess risk.

"I'm hoping that this will be an incentive for paedophiles to disclose more information, which would help us to manage their release more effectively."

Justice Minister David Hanson said the use of thorough systems to ensure a "high level vigilance" of serious sexual and violent offenders after their release from prison was vital for protecting communities.

The long-expected move had been a commitment of the government, he said, and he was "proud to say that this can now legally happen from Wednesday".

Each polygraph session will take between 90 minutes and two hours and will consist of three phases.

In a pre-test interview the subject will be told the questions they are to be asked so they can make any relevant disclosures beforehand.

They will then be attached to the polygraph machine and asked the questions.

Thirdly the polygraph operator will interpret the responses and, in a final interview, the subject will be told the results of the test and asked to explain any failures.

Pam Hibbert, assistant director of policy at children's charity Barnardos, said the tests would "increase public confidence" that sex offenders were complying with supervision, staying away from schools and playgrounds and living and sleeping where they are supposed to.

"It is important however that this is used as part of a package of measures including greater use of satellite tracking."

She said that would be more "false comfort of Sarah's Law", which in four pilot areas allows parents to ask police if anyone with access to children has convictions for child sex offences.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7983993.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7983993.stm
 
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Anonymous said:
Polygraphs are utterly useless.
Maybe the technology has moved on, because this one got a result:

Adrian Prout shows police where murdered wife's body is buried
Jailed husband leads officers in search of Gloucestershire farm, after failed lie detector test leaves fiancee devastated
Steven Morris guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 November 2011 23.42 GMT

Police plan to scour woodland after a wealthy landowner jailed for murdering his wife led officers to the area where he says her body is buried.
Adrian Prout, who is serving a life sentence for killing his estranged wife Kate Prout in 2007 but who had always denied any involvement in her disappearance, was taken from prison back to his former farm in Gloucestershire on Friday.
He spent 25 minutes on the 276-acre Redhill Farm at Redmarley, near Tewkesbury, and pointed out the area where he claims her remains are hidden.
Police, who are guarding the spot, said there was likely to be a lengthy search on Monday.

It has been claimed that Prout made his confession after failing a lie detector test that had been arranged by his fiancee, Debbie Garlick. She was convinced Prout was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and had led a campaign for his release.

Garlick, who moved out of the farm only a few weeks ago and has a child by Prout, said he had made a full confession to her. She told ITV's The West Country Tonight he said he was sorry. Garlick then went to the police and told them he had admitted the crime.
She said she and her family were "devastated", adding: "Our hearts go out to Kate and her family. I hope this gives them the chance to grieve properly and have a proper burial and somewhere they can lay flowers."

Speaking on behalf of Kate Prout's family, her brother, Richard Wakefield, said: "We have always wanted Adrian to tell us where Kate's body is. However, this news has obviously come as something of a shock. We would like to be given some time to come to terms with this news."

Mrs Prout, a 55-year-old former teacher, was last seen on bonfire night four years ago. Police were certain she had been killed and carried out extensive searches of Redhill Farm but could not find her body. Prout was charged with murder and convicted in February last year. His trial was told that the couple were involved in an acrimonious divorce at the time she disappeared.

Prout continued to protest his innocence and friends and family claimed he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. A group Justice for Adrian Prout used the motto: "No body, no proof, no justice."

Three months ago, Prout's supporters arranged for him to take a lie detector test in prison. Don Cargill, a polygraph expert, visited Prout in Garth prison in Lancashire. He explained how he monitored Prout's heart rate, blood pressure, the amount he was sweating and how he was breathing as he answered questions.

At first, Prout said he did not want to take the test, according to Cargill. Finally, Prout agreed to the procedure, saying: "I'd better do it for Debbie."

Cargill asked him three questions about the murder – whether he had killed his wife, whether he had arranged for someone else to kill her, and whether he knew where her body was.

He replied "no" to each, but Cargill said his equipment indicated he was lying. Cargill said he told Prout: "I'm looking at a murderer." Prout replied: "Not really." Cargill asked Prout whether he was saying the test was wrong. Prout admitted that it was not wrong.


Cargill told him he should "man up" and admit his guilt. He left the prison and rang Garlick to break the news that Prout had failed the test.

On Thursday, detectives spoke to Prout and he finally admitted he had killed his wife and agreed to point out the spot where she was buried. Prout arrived at the farm in a people carrier just after 11.30am on Friday and was led out of the vehicle, handcuffed to a police officer.

He was transferred into a police car at the entrance to the farm and driven into a wood. The particular area that was pointed out is believed to be within a pheasant pen.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/1 ... fes-buried
 
Doesn't mean they're any more reliable. They work on some people in some circumstances. There are ways to cheat them, and they can (and do) give false positives. All this shows is that this one time, it seemed to work properly.

There's a very good episode of Barney Miller that deals with this.
 
They get results by intimidation and playing on a 'guilty conscience'. They don't work otherwise. There was an excellent scene in a 'Law and Order' episode where they got some vital information out of a teen by convinvcing him their photo copier was a lie detector. (I do know that is a fictional series!)

Since most people now know how they work they are probably less effective than ever.
 
Cochise said:
... There was an excellent scene in a 'Law and Order' episode where they got some vital information out of a teen by convinvcing him their photo copier was a lie detector. (I do know that is a fictional series!) ...

The TV version was playing on a much older reported story, which Snopes concluded was probably an unfounded urban legend:

http://www.snopes.com/legal/colander.asp

However ... This account:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/crime/ ... tector.htm

... claims a judge confirmed the basic story and explained the apparently spurious reports had cited the wrong location / jurisdiction.
 
Cochise said:
They get results by intimidation and playing on a 'guilty conscience'. ...

Having been subjected to a polygraph test in the context of a serious investigation, I'd rephrase that as: "They attempt to obtain results by intimidating the subject into cracking should he / she have a guilty conscience."

I won't go into the context except to note it concerned the one area where polygraphy remains acceptable investigatory practice under current US law.

In accordance with standard procedure, the professional polygrapher flown in from Washington DC wired me up and asked two sets of questions: (a) the baseline test questions (e.g., Is it raining? What is your name?) and (b) the actual probe questions (relating to the matter at issue).

She then presented me with the graph chart printout, demonstrated that my response tracings peaked significantly higher on the probe questions, stated this indicated I hadn't been entirely truthful, and invited me to modify my answers.

I told her the graphs indicated nothing more or less than the fact I became more physiologically stressed every time she'd posed a question bearing on my reputation, my livelihood, my career, and potentially serious legal jeopardy. The results would only appear curious if I hadn't exhibited more stress on those items entailing actual consequences.

Needless to say, this didn't sit well with the polygrapher, and a testy 'debate' ensued. This argument stopped dead when I stated my summary opinion on her field of expertise. She asked me to repeat what I'd said, I did so, she carefully transcribed it onto a report form, and that ended the session.

... And that's why somewhere in or around Washington DC there's a file on me within which polygraphy is claimed (in writing; over my signature, as I recall) to be 'voodoo pseudo-science'.

For the record ... Save for a single note stating I'd consented and submitted to a polygraph test, no mention of the test or its purported results appeared in the investigation's concluding report or any record documentation of the *four* appeals through which the case eventually progressed (even though, as mentioned earlier, this occurred within a context where polygraph results are still allowable evidence).

For what it's worth, I concluded the test had always represented an exercise in testing my will in a conversational setting and nothing to do with squiggles on paper. In other words, I believe the machine was employed as a hopefully intimidating interrogation 'prop' rather than an analytical instrument.
 
Well done you!
 
EnolaGaia - congratulations - sounds like you pretty much kept your cool under extremely trying circumstances.

That they didn't attempt to use the lie detector traces suggests that the senior investigators know perfectly well that lie detectors don't do any actual lie detecting, they are indeed just a prop.
 
EnolaGaia - fascinating story. And congratulations for saying what a lot of people think about the test.
 
Thanks, folks ... It's a 'war story' I'd rather not have acquired, but it was an important learning experience.

Some follow-up notes ...

(1) Just for the record - the answers I gave during the session were all truthful. (I realized I'd never mentioned whether or not I might have actually been lying.)

(2) By profession I am (and was at the time) a senior human factors researcher with substantial knowledge about human physiological responses and issues relating to monitoring them. Yes, I made pointed reference to this background in debating with the polygrapher.

(3) I fully expected to 'fail' the test - not because I would be lying, but because I'm generally high-strung and get enervated under discursive duress. In other words, I would have been surprised if I hadn't 'peaked' at the probe questions.

(4) Tactics for 'fooling the lie detector' basically fall into 2 categories: (a) relaxing to minimize spikes on the probe questions and / or (b) self-stressing (e.g., self-inflicted pain) to raise the apparent stress level on the baseline. Both approaches are intended to reduce the recorded differences between baseline / innocuous and probe / consequential responses. It's the difference(s) between responses - not the value(s) of either - that are considered significant(i.e., indicative of lying if you believe the theory). I did not attempt to employ any such tactics.

(5) I hadn't originally planned to challenge the procedure itself. It was the test's own results (heightened peaks on the probe questions) that convinced me, in that moment, that the differences were natural, any presumption of actual lying was bogus, and that the whole point was to try one more time to shake me. In other words - it was the test's own outcome that finally convinced me the test was bogus (at least with respect to proving deceit). It was in that moment I decided to plant my feet and fight back.

(6) I make no claim that my challenging the test's validity directly caused the event's disappearance from subsequent records or proceedings. For all I know, it was a last ditch exercise that was never intended to be mentioned again anyway.
 
Police trial lie detector tests on sex offender suspects

Police have begun using lie detector tests on suspected sex offenders in a trial which could be widened.
Hertfordshire Police confirmed it had been using polygraphs, which monitor heart rate, brain activity, sweating and blood pressure, during questioning.
The pilot scheme was being used to help decide whether to charge suspects, according to The Times.
But the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said the tests were at a very early stage.

The Times reported that Hertfordshire Police tested 25 "low-level" sex offenders, with some making disclosures they might otherwise have been unlikely to and others apparently lying - prompting officers to conduct further investigations.

Acpo said its Homicide Working Group advised police on the use of polygraph techniques and would follow the trial in Hertfordshire with interest.
A spokeswoman said: "Polygraph techniques are complex and are by no means a single solution to solving crimes, potentially offering in certain circumstances an additional tool to structured interrogation.

"These initial trials are in their very early stages and we will follow their progress, working with chief officers across the country to provide further guidance if necessary.
"Whether these techniques are adopted elsewhere in the country is a matter for individual chief constables."
Acpo represents chief police officers from England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Hertfordshire Police confirmed its use of the pilot scheme but would not give any further details.

Although routine in police investigations in the US, the results of lie detector tests are considered too unreliable for use in criminal trials in the UK.
However, a three-year pilot study in the East and West Midlands could lead to the compulsory testing of convicted sex offenders.
The Ministry of Justice has been overseeing the project, aimed at testing sex offenders as part of their probation conditions when they are freed from prison.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16371043
 
Sigh. Why not call in the astrologers and psychics as well? Maybe hire the Paedofinder General off Youtube?
 
OK, so they're trialling a technology that's been around since at least the 50s, and has never been deemed reliable enough to use as evidence, and in which no major developments have been made.

What do they think makes it suddenly reliable? It sounds like they want to use it to try and coerce confessions out of people, rather than to determine innocence or guilt.

(Also, just how "routine" are they in the US. They aren't admissible in court there, either.)

First time they take it to court, I expect to see some fireworks. Anyone got Geoffrey Robertson's number?
 
I wonder what happens if you get two lie detector operators, strap them into their own machines and then take turns to ask each one what the other one wouldn;t say if asked if their machine doesn;t work?
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
I wonder what happens if you get two lie detector operators, strap them into their own machines and then take turns to ask each one what the other one wouldn;t say if asked if their machine doesn;t work?
Ah! The Cretan lie detectors! 8)
 
rynner2 said:
BlackRiverFalls said:
I wonder what happens if you get two lie detector operators, strap them into their own machines and then take turns to ask each one what the other one wouldn;t say if asked if their machine doesn;t work?
Ah! The Cretan lie detectors! 8)

The lie detector cretins, more like. :)
 
Another twist on this topic.

Spy Sat Agency Let Child Molesters in Its Ranks Go Free
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/polygraph/
By Robert BeckhusenEmail Author July 11, 2012 | 12:41 pm | Categories: Spies, Secrecy and Surveillance

National Reconnaissance Office patch commemorating a satellite launch. Photo: mr. smashy/Flickr

The National Reconnaissance Office — the secretive Pentagon agency in charge of spy satellites — is supposed to safeguarding Americans and American interests from foreign threats. But the agency has done an incomplete job, at best, at protecting American children from its own employees and job applicants.

According to documents obtained by the McClatchy news service, a former California substitute teacher who sought a security clearance from the National Reconnaissance Office confessed during a lie detector exam to molesting an elementary school student. The agency never informed police nor the school district where the incident allegedly occurred. An Air Force lieutenant who confessed to assaulting a child in Virginia was never reported to either the Air Force or police.

Like many of America’s national security services, the Pentagon’s spy satellite agency screens employees and applicants with polygraph machines. The so-called “lie detector” tests are supposed to stop spies, and polygraphers’ questions are officially limited to national security questions in order to protect employee privacy. But whistleblowers now say the polygraph program is “squeezing every personal secret out of people without regard for the consequence.” Which wouldn’t be so bad — if the NRO actually reported to the police confessions to serious crimes like child molestation extracted during polygraph sessions. But McClatchy could not confirm that this took place. The agency responded that criminal confessions were “forwarded to appropriate authorities,” but didn’t provide more information to the news service.

Now, it’s possible the polygraph records would never have made it to court — many courts refuse to accept results from polygraph tests as evidence, due to skepticism the tests reflect more pseudoscience than science, and don’t detect lies as much as emotional responses. Charges might not be filed “even if there’s a confession,” the report notes.

Whistleblowers, though, say the agency may be trying to shield its practices from the public eye. Dissent within the agency over the scale of the program could threaten to leak out, sources told McClatchy, if interviews and test notes were handed over to the courts.


Instead, internal critics say, polygraphers were told to ask questions that were humiliating, abusive and extraneous to the subject of national security. “I was coached to go after this stuff,” a polygrapher told McClatchy. “It blew my mind. They were asking me to elicit information that I’m not permitted to ask about, and I told them I wasn’t going to do it.” The polygrapher added that while the agency has official policies to only ask specific, relevant questions and leave out the personal lives of interviewees, bosses were “in fact behind closed doors … pushing (polygraphers) to actively pursue it.”

Polygraphers’ work performance was measured according to “the number of personal confessions” the employee was able to extract. A former agency polygrapher, Chuck Hinshaw, who has since gone public, said he received “thousands of dollars in bonuses” for his good record of extracting confessions. Another whistleblower, Mark Phillips, had a poorer record, as he was uncomfortable pursuing personal details. The agency has since labeled him as a troublemaker.

A contract employee, who revealed she smoked marijuana as a youth, was called back in for a four-hour session and grilled by Hinshaw. Hinshaw says his superiors ordered him to continue interrogating the woman on her drug use. The woman then revealed she had been molested as a youth. Hinshaw wanted to end it there, but his superiors “demanded that Hinshaw continue the questioning.”

“You don’t understand,” Hinshaw told them. “This woman needs help.”

Hinshaw says he stepped aside. But the agency sent another polygrapher in to press the employee.

There could be another reason for the thoroughness of the tests: “By collecting confessions to repulsive or criminal behavior, officials can justify using polygraph screenings to their bosses, Congress and a skeptical public despite questions about the test’s reliability,” according to agency polygraphers cited by McClatchy.

This is while Pentagon polygraph programs have continued to expand. Despite a poor record, scant support from the scientific community, and skepticism from the National Academy of Sciences that the tests are flimsy, the tests have “increased fivefold, to almost 46,000 annually” at the Pentagon, the report notes.

It’s also become a tool to help the Obama administration stop suspected leakers. The administration is already prosecuting more officials for leaking secrets than any other administration. The White House also wants to be more proactive.

But it’s another question as to whether it’s effective, or whether agencies are trying too hard, while paradoxically not doing enough.
 
It now appears there's good reason to question the significance of eye movements as an indication of possible lying behavior ...

The eyes do not have it in lie test

2:00am Thursday 12th July 2012 in National News © Press Association 2011

The suggested link between lying and eye movements does not exist, researchers said
Lying eyes are a myth, despite the common belief that no fibber can hide behind them, research has shown.

For decades experts have been convinced that eye movements can reveal when someone is lying. Many psychologists believe that when a person looks up to their right they are likely to be telling a lie.

Glancing up to the left, on the other hand, is said to indicate honesty. But the experts are wrong, according to Professor Richard Wiseman and his team of researchers, who tested whether eyes really can reveal lies.

The claimed link between lying and eye movements is a key element of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), a method of enhancing people's lives using psychological techniques. An important aspect of NLP involves teaching people about the relationship between eye movements and thought.

According to the theory, when right-handed people look up to their right they are likely to be visualising a "constructed" or imagined event. In contrast when they look to their left they are likely to be visualising a "remembered" memory. For this reason, when liars are constructing their own version of the truth, they tend to look to the right.

The idea was tested by filming volunteers and recording their eye movements as they told the truth or lied. A second group of volunteers was then asked to watch the films and try to detect the lies by watching the eye movements.

Psychologist Prof Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire, said: "The results of the first study revealed no relationship between lying and eye movements, and the second showed that telling people about the claims made by NLP practitioners did not improve their lie detection skills."

A follow-up study involved analysing videos of high-profile press conferences in which people appealed for help in finding missing relatives, or claimed to have been victims of crime. While some were telling the truth, others turned out to be lying. Again, there was no evidence of a correlation between lying and eye movements.

Co-author Dr Caroline Watt, from the University of Edinburgh, said: "A large percentage of the public believes that certain eye movements are a sign of lying, and this idea is even taught in organisational training courses. Our research provides no support for the idea and so suggests that it is time to abandon this approach to detecting deceit."

The research appears in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE.

SOURCE: http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/uk_na ... n_lie_test
 
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