A question about the polygraph exam.

[lax854]

Just out of curiosity, at what rate to do you believe false positives happen? And on what are you basing your answer?

you know mo, im gonna have to agree with that statement. Perhaps i am wrong, but i remember reading acouple of VERIFIEDS on the site claim they had failed their first polygraph. I know this is very subjective, but if the machine can be tricked by serial killers, then i believe it can produce false positives. But hey, i dont know enough about the subject to support my claim. I only go by what i hear.

[mobrien316]

you know mo, im gonna have to agree with that statement. Perhaps i am wrong, but i remember reading acouple of VERIFIEDS on the site claim they had failed their first polygraph. I know this is very subjective, but if the machine can be tricked by serial killers, then i believe it can produce false positives. But hey, i dont know enough about the subject to support my claim. I only go by what i hear.

I failed three of my four pre-employment polygraphs even though I was telling the truth in all of them, and answered the questions the same in all of them.

In my experience, false positives occur in 75% of exams given to truthful people.

[Sullio]

That many?

When I did research for the paper I mentioned earlier, the rate was something like %15 of people failed by a polygraph are probably false-positives. That includes regular pre-employment polygraphs for things like security and cash-handling jobs as well as law-enforcement polygraphs which are much more intense.