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by LatteLazy 2138 days ago
Per the article:

>It is to be noted that around the time Ma applied for employment with the FBI, the Bureau had a roughly 50% polygraph failure rate for special agent applicants, with many honest persons being wrongly branded as liars and barred for life from FBI employment

So either 50% of FBI Applicants were actually foreign agents AND believed in polygraphs (why would they if they were trained foreign agents?) OR it's just total bullshit. I think the "it works if you believe in it and some people do" myth is just that...

It's a very attractive idea that we can tell (even partially) whether someone is lying. We actually might be able to with an fMRI setup I think. But polygraphs should be long gone as rubbish. I have no idea why anyone in the USA takes them seriously.

1 comments

> So either 50% of FBI Applicants were actually foreign agents AND believed in polygraphs (why would they if they were trained foreign agents?) OR it's just total bullshit. I think the "it works if you believe in it and some people do" myth is just that...

It's even dumber than that. From what I've heard, the big failure rate is often with respect to drugs. You're allowed to have experimented with marijuana a specific, small number of times.