A rather damning article in the Boston Globe about how inaccurate polygraph machines are — especially for security screening. Though long on anecdote, the story mentions a couple of scientific studies, too:
That was where matters stood until 1999, when Congress began looking closely at security at the Los Alamos and Sandia labs in the midst of the Wen Ho Lee fiasco. The uproar was immediate and loud. After a series of stormy public meetings in New Mexico, Congress mandated the testing of the 20,000 employees at both labs. But New Mexico senator Jeff Bingaman, for whom this was a constituent matter, forced into the bill the funding for the National Academy of Sciences report on the reliability of the polygraph when used for security screening. When it was released late last year, the study proved the most significant critique of the polygraph since the Frye decision.
The study determined that not only was the polygraph useless for security screening but that its use might actually be detrimental to the work of keeping the labs secure. It argued that the test was so vague that, to catch one spy, nearly 100 other employees might have to have their security clearances lifted. “Polygraph testing,” the report concluded, “yields an unacceptable choice . . . between too many loyal employees falsely judged deceptive and too many . . . threats left undetected.”
This put the Department of Energy in a bind. However, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham declined either to abandon the polygraph or to fully support it. Instead, he briefly delayed the testing, citing the outbreak of the war in Iraq. Later, however, it quietly began again, and the Department of Energy issued a statement saying that the “issues” raised by the National Academy of Sciences were not sufficient to abandon the polygraph.
Note that Congress in 1998 forbade polygraphs from being used by private employers, and they remain, since 1923, inadmissable in court. And yet Congress — which declines to let any of the beasties near itself or its staff — expressly allows other governmental agencies to use polygraphs, and regularly responds to their requests for more funding for broader polygraph programs.
Not surprisingly, polygraphers (who have no sort of federal licensing or guidelines), and polygraph companies are among the biggest touts of the machines, alongside government types who want to prove they’re doing something, dammit. That, and people raised on TV portrayals of “lie detectors” and their unerring pointing at The Guilty Party.
Feh.
(via InstaPundit, who calls it “trial by ordeal, with fancy printouts, and about as accurate”)
I’ve been meaning to rant about the overuse of polygraph tests for awhile now and the public’s perception of their usefullness. Thanks for reminding me. One thing you will never see me do is take a polygraph.