BYPOL employee fired over lie detector but scientists say it can be fooled

Employee screening does not investigate a specific event, and the questions must be general ones that can only be answered "yes" or "no." For example: "Have you ever disclosed classified information to an unauthorized person?" It is then difficult to know whether an answer to such a question is truthful unless there are clear and consistent criteria defining what actions warrant a "yes" answer. Subjects may believe they are lying when they are giving factually truthful answers, or vice versa.

Thus, polygraphs can detect admissions to actions that are not central to the purpose of the question, and these responses can be scored as a success or failure of the test.

The use of polygraph testing in hiring is even more complicated because it requires making inferences about a person's future behavior based on information about past behavior that may be quite different (such as past illegal drug use or lying about such use to a polygraph).
 

P.S.: "It's their right to try to find out everything about us, it's our right to tell them to go to hell..."

A lie detector test is a very controversial procedure. It involves asking a person a lot of different questions. A person may refuse this procedure not only because they are "shady", but also because they do not want their privacy invaded.

"Every person has his or her own personal inner world, which he or she tries to protect from intrusion, and which he or she does not have to allow anyone to enter," Victor Sorochenko reminds. "Each of us has personal motives, interests and secret desires that we do not want and do not have to reveal to outsiders. In the Anglo-American legal system there is even a special category of privacy, which means the right to privacy and inviolability of private life, the intimate sphere of a person. A lie detector test is a direct invasion of your intimate sphere."

The specialist recommends a visit to the English-language site of polygraph ideologues Antipolygraph.org.

"The credo of this site is very appealing to many. Loosely translated into Russian, it sounds something like this: 'Their right is to try to find out everything about us, and our right is to tell them to go to hell. That is democracy. There is a curious piece on this site called "The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. In it, lie detector opponents propose their own methods to combat "unscientific methods of testifying, designed for idiots, and working only in an illegitimate country."