The Truth About Polygraphs
The polygraph test is still often referred to in media reports as if it were in fact an accurate tool to determine whether a person is lying. Howard Fienberg recently wrote a nice, short summary of the numerous problems with the polygraph for Spiked-Online.Com. Polygraphs: the truth.
Fienberg quotes University of Minnesota psychologist William Iacono as saying that “almost no published peer-reviewed scientific papers exist that bear out the accuracy of current polygraph techniques,” and the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association both maintain that there is no evidence that the success rate of polygraph tests is any better than that obtained through pure chance.
As Fienberg sums it up, “With an error rate that defies calculation, polygraph tests are much more useful as tools of intimation than as instruments of truth.”
Source:
Polygraphs: the truth. Howard Fienberg, Spiked-Online.Com, April 19, 2001.
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