[smegsicle]

a lot of people seem to feel superior by calling them horoscopes- similar to how some people will confidently tell you that the polygraph is completely useless and not a measurement of anything, just because it's not a magically perfect lie-detector device that should be used in courtrooms

[stephen_g]

What are you trying to say about the polygraph? Polygraphs are definitely and absolutely a net negative in any situation if the person operating it believes they work, because you get honest people failing them because the operator thinks they're "hiding something" from the basically meaningless output. As far as I'm aware, a lot of the people working with these machines fall into this category.

I guess on the other hand, if the operator did fully know it's complete pseudoscience, then it might be sometimes useful, because it could then function as a useful interrogation prop as long as the person being interrogated beleives it works.