Donjeta
Adji Desir, missing from Florida
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2009
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What is the point of a polygraph if they are only to be believed when someone apparently fails the test?
But then I always have thought that something not usable in Court is pretty pointless anyway.
If someone passed the polygraph but is known to have lied based on other information and insists that it was completely justified to lie I wouldn't put much stock in the polygraph result. The liars are supposed to feel guilty about lying and get nervous physiological reactions because of that but if you can justify lying to yourself because it is convenient for you for whatever reason, if it was completely OK to lie because it had nothing to do with anything, why would you feel guilty?
I think LDTs are mostly only useful in getting people to confess, on occasion, and it might possibly aid in the investigation to see who is willing to take one and who is not. It's not reliable enough to prove someone lied or told the truth because it does not detect lying, it detects physical responses that are influenced by a number of other factors besides lying. In many countries the polygraph is not even used.
JMO but I think it's very likely that both the guilty and innocent are more likely to be nervous when asked "did you harm your baby" than some unthreatening control question. They both can tell what the important questions are, and the very idea of the baby being harmed may be enough to cause a physiological response in an innocent parent.
I would like to see more research into guilty knowledge tests. It's a variation of the polygraph in which there are several alternative scenarios and LE and the guilty person is supposed to be the only one to know which one is correct and react to that. But obviously it's very hard to construct and if LE doesn't know what happened either it's practically impossible, and how can one be sure that nothing has been leaked anywhere?
But this is OT. So, Dr. Phil...
I hope someone can transcribe the highlights when following the show because I won't be able to watch today.