The Conscience of Abe’s Turn freedom of speech, defense, and life

AntiPolygraph.org News comments on the Agence France Presse report that Iraq has turned to polygraphs to outsmart Al-Qaeda. Now, if you don’t know the joke behind the polygraph—or any lie detection device—it’s basically a feat of conjuring, a parlor trick. Like some other police questioning techniques, it involves lying in order to make you believe that it works. Then when it does “work,” you attribute it to the magic of the machine.

The Polygraph and Lie Detection, a report by the National Academy of Sciences, puts it this way:

Almost a century of research in scientific psychology and physiology provides little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy. The physiological responses measured by the polygraph are not uniquely related to deception. That is, the responses measured by the polygraph do not all reflect a single underlying process: a variety of psychological and physiological processes, including some that can be consciously controlled, can affect polygraph measures and test results. Moreover, most polygraph testing procedures allow for uncontrolled variation in test administration (e.g., creation of the emotional climate, selecting questions) that can be expected to result in variations in accuracy and that limit the level of accuracy that can be consistently achieved.

That leaves the impression that the polygrapher is as good as any skilled magician or mind reader, using his own gimmicks.

AntiPolygraph.org News sums up:

In laboratory experiments conducted by Charles R. Honts and collaborators, some 50% of examinees who received a maximum of 30 minutes of training were able to fool the polygraph, and even experienced polygraphers could not detect the countermeasures. Any Al-Qaeda members seeking to infiltrate the Iraqi (or for that matter, the U.S.) government will have much more than 30 minutes in which to prepare. [emphasis in original]

(Click here to read the whole article.)

It’s like one big, cruel joke. Like the TSA. But then again, that’s another government program, too, isn’t it.

Always watching!
-TimK