The Polygraph

Kevin Robert Dean qualiall_2 at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 9 19:39:29 PDT 2001


Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 13:53:13 EDT From: Barry Karr <SkeptInq at aol.com> Subject: The Polygraph: Does It Detect Lies or Rely on Lies?

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Kevin Christopher

Phone: (716) 636-1425 ext. 224

Fax: (716) 636-1733

E-mail: press at csicop.org

The Polygraph: Does It Detect Lies or Rely on Lies?

Amherst, N.Y. (June 28, 2001)-When the FBI announced that it had uncovered

Robert Philip Hanssen's 15 years of alleged espionage activities, the

immediate question was how an organization like the FBI, equipped with the best investigative tools, could overlook so serious a security breach for so

long. An article by the Center for National Security and Arms Control's

senior scientist, published in the new July/August 2001 issue of Skeptical

Inquirer, suggests that such blunders might be explained by American law

enforcement's love affair with the arcane contraption known as the polygraph

(a.k.a lie detector).

Alan P. Zelicoff is the Senior Scientist in the Center for National Security

and Arms Control at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. He offers a

scathing indictment in his article for Skeptical Inquirer, titled

"Polygraphs and the National Labs: Dangerous Ruse Undermines National

Security." Zelicoff compares the polygraph to the ancient Roman practice of

divining the future from animal entrails: "Perhaps polygraphers would do

better with Wonder Woman's lasso than they have been doing with their box.

The secret of the polygraph-the polygrapher's own shameless deception-is

that their machine is no more capable of telling the truth than were the

priests of ancient Rome standing knee-deep in chicken parts."

According to Zelicoff, the four parameters measured by the polygraph-blood

pressure, pulse, perspiration, and breathing rate-are all affected by a

broad range of emotions, and offer no reliable measurement of deception.

Zelicoff says that there are dozens of studies in the past two decades

showing that the lie detector cannot distinguish between truth telling and

lying. As examples of the polygrapher's dangerous inaccuracy, he points to

the cases of spies like Aldrich Ames and the Walker brothers, who passed

their polygraph tests repeatedly every five years. He also cites examples of

those wrongly accused based on shoddy polygraph evidence, such as FBI agent

Mark Mullah whose career was ruined by suspicion, despite the fact that all

"evidence" against him was dismissed and his badge was restored.

"It is time to relegate the polygraph... to the ash heap of bad ideas and

misplaced beliefs," Zelicoff says. The scientist urges that "we should not

make the spy's task easier with self-defeating measures like the polygraph."

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