<<Them the facts....[that lie detector machines are "95% accurate.]>>
Oh, REALLY? ? ? ? ? Then you shouldn't have any trouble at all finding me independent research studies that have confirmed or established them "facts," should you?
And before you start, I'll help you out a little bit: <<
To determine whether polygraph exams have any validity, the National Research Council conducted a major study that was released in 2002. The 398-page report is easy to summarize: Polygraphs are baloney. The report found that lie detector exams are so subjective and undependable—are they really measuring deception, or just fear, for example—that they are inherently untrustworthy.>>
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/human_guinea_pig/2005/01/can_i_beata_lie_detector.2.htmlThis seems to fit in seamlessly with
all of the U.S. and Canadian courts refusing to admit these gizmos and their charlatan operators to provide any evidence at all in their courtrooms, nothwithstanding their ready admission of fingerprints, breathalyzers, DNA, ballistics, graphology and other scientific evidence on a routine basis.
And now, with bated breath, I eagerly await your revelation of the "study" that will blow those quacks at the National Research Council right out of the water. C'mon, sirs, I know you can do it!!
<<And you can despense with . . . what is or isn't admissable in court. This isn't a trial . . .>>
Uh, actually what you
CAN'T dispense with are the REASONS why no court will accept them in evidence. The reason being, that
every single time an attempt WAS made to receive them in evidence, the court heard all the arguments FOR receiving them and all the arguments AGAINST receiving them. And guess what every court in your country and mine has concluded after hearing all the evidence pro and con? E
very court in our two countries, on a full hearing of the relevant evidence, decided that these machines and their operators were just junk science and as such completely unreliable in determining if a witness was lying or not. Which, strangely enough, was EXACTLY what the National Research Council also concluded in its major study of 2002. (see above)
<< and your opinion on the "junk science" that Police depts all across the country use, is duly noted.>>
Since you seem to live in a different country from the rest of us, wherein apparently it is left to the Police rather than the Courts, to determine whether a witness is lying or not, I will clue you in to exactly how the police departments in the U.S. and Canada use the lie detector - -
as a tool. What kind of tool? An
investigative tool, one that, by finding seemingly aberrant physiological responses to certain words or questions, helps focus the investigation in directions that might otherwise have seemed of secondary or tertiary interest only.
A secondary use of lie detectors by the police, and IMHO not a very legitimate one, is to intimidate the suspect into a confession. As in "Alright, son, your buddy in the next cell has already told us what really happened. And this is
your last chance to show some cooperation and just tell us the truth for once in your fucking life, because next stop, kid, is the lie detector in the next room, and it's gonna find it all out anyway, so do yourself a favour and give me some reason that I can tell the court, "He did cooperate with the investigation, Your Honour," and still be able to look at myself in the mirror every morning.
So that's the reason the police use the machines as investigative tools, and not in a pointless exercise to determine who's lying or not, because no matter what they determine, the courts would not accept the evidence anyway.