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Nostalgia: The Polygraph Test · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome to Why we do
• 0:16
  what we do. I am your detectably nervous host, Abraham, and I
• 0:20
  am You're covered in nodes Shane. Yeah, you aren't covered. That's a
• 0:24
  fact. Where a psychology podcast, we talk about all the things that people
• 0:29
  do and sometimes how we measure the things that they do. And sometimes what
• 0:32
  we do is we take a step back and we replay an oldie and a
• 0:36
  golden oldie from the beginnings of this the humble beginnings of this podcast several years
• 0:40
  ago. Because maybe you're new and you haven't heard us before. Maybe you're
• 0:43
  around and you don't remember us talking about this thing. But we call these
• 0:47
  nar nostalgia episodes. Just opening one of these up and playing it back for
• 0:51
  you to to recapture the good old days. Yeah, it's kind of like
• 0:54
  turning on the radio and listening to the Beach Boys instead of Nickelback. A
• 1:00
  good choice for anybody in all circumstances. Yes, if those are your two
• 1:06
  choices, I guess. Anyway, back when we were publishing these, we
• 1:11
  did not acknowledge the day on which the episode was published, and now we
• 1:14
  do. And even if we had acknowledged it back in the day, it
• 1:17
  wouldn't be true for a nostalgia release, So this episode will be published July
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  fifth. So happy post Independence Day. Hopefully you are rid of your fireworks
• 1:25
  and are not setting for us on fire and observed all laws around you with
• 1:30
  respect to that, Yes, or just shot fireworks at each other if that's
• 1:33
  your choice, I guess. I mean, I'm from Florida, and that's
• 1:34
  that's a pastime of ours. That is fair firing Roman candles at each other.
• 1:38
  Yeah, that is true. But anyway, because this comes out in
• 1:44
  July fifth, there are some actual holidays to acknowledge in July fifth, and
• 1:47
  one of them is that it is National Bikini Day, so guys and gals
• 1:52
  go get your bikinis on. Yeah, I got mine. It's National Hawaii
• 1:56
  Day as well, so welcome, Welcome to the Union. I'm sure you
• 1:59
  all are very stoked. I imagine the local culture is really thrilled. Yeah.
• 2:04
  Those two go hand in hand a little bit, Yeah, a little
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  bit. Yeah. We have Mechanical pencil Day. I love mechanical pencils.
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  A good good point five lad for me, it's choice stuff me too,
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  me too, Yeah, alignment my friend alignment. It's also National Apple Turnover
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  Day, so I'm a big fan of desserts, so yeah, I like
• 2:21
  that. It's National Graham Crackers Day, and there's actually some fun history to
• 2:24
  dig in on graham crackers because the history of the Graham cracker is weird.
• 2:30
  I think we actually talked about this, I believe it or not in our
• 2:34
  Masturbation episode. Yes we did, because corn flakes have a similar history.
• 2:38
  Okay, yeah, yeah, exactly the guy. Yeah, yeah, you
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  can go find out more about graham crackers by listening to our discussion on masturbation.
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  Yes you can. It's also National Ian Day, so if your name
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  is Ian, I guess congratulations, you have a whole day. That's a
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  thing. Yeah, it was very much so thing. I'll surprised myself.
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  It is National Workaholics Day. I guess, stop but respond to that maybe,
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  yeah, don't do that anymore. It's National Pet Rememberance Day. I
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  have a giant rememberance tattoo on my forearm from a pet of mine, so
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  I appreciate this day. Nice. It is also Venezuela and Algeria Independence Days.
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  Happy Independence Days, guys. Yeah, congratulations, y'ell. It's fun
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  in addition, we'll acknowledge that July is National cell Phone Courtesy Month, and
• 3:24
  this has to do with bone up on your cell phone etiquette and do your
• 3:29
  part to make society less annoying, which is to like, don't you speaker
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  phone when you're in public? Yeah, or consider who's around you? Yeah
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  yeah wherever? Yeah, or stop using your phone as a walkie talkie.
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  You remember those days you were one that was the thing that's going on.
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  I do, I do remember that being a thing. Yeah, that was
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  a very specific moment in time. It's like that and like hit clips,
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  Like we're very specific things. I don't remember hip clips. Is that we
• 3:53
  said hit clips. So they were like songs. They were like these like
• 3:57
  like key chains that was like one song that you would put in this little
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  device and it would play something like pop song and that was it, but
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  you would have to pay for it. Like it was like basically like it
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  was like a device that would play one MP three at a time. So
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  it was like like the the iPod shuffle, except it only had like one
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  track on it, yeah, and you would have to change out. It
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  was like it was like having a tape for one song and this little thing
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  it was terrible. That's hilarious. Oh my gosh, everybody thought the future
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  was going to be so cool. I mean, it's better than hit clips
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  apparently. Yeah, so there's that. Sure. We're actually not talking about
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  hit clips today. We're talking about a We're rerunning an old episode about the
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  polygraph or Lie detector test, how this is applied to friends with psychology,
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  understanding of the psychological processes and how it's supposed to work. And this is
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  from back in the day when it was just me and Ryan recording together.
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  So Shane wasn't it was not yet. I wasn't even born yet. You
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  weren't been born yet, You're you're just a hypothesis at that point. This
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  was episode twenty nine, published November thirtieth, twenty seventeen. We're ahead and
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  just played the episode and it's entirety here, and then we're gonna come back
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  at the end of this episode with some updates and discussion of what has happened
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  in polygraphs since this episode was recorded in twenty seventeen. Anything to add before
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  we jump into this, Shane, Nope, we'll see you in a minute,
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  all right, enjoy this episode on polygraphs. Hello, This is Abraham
• 5:25
  and your co host Ryano, and so today we are gonna start by telling
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  a little bit of a story. Okay, let's hear it. Ready for
• 5:30
  a story? Yeah, okay, all right. So there was this case
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  where a woman had died, and before she had died, she had had
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  an altercation. She had a fight with her ex boyfriend, and so naturally
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  he became a leading suspect. It seems, you know, like that makes
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  perfect sense that they had been in a relationship, they knew one another,
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  they got in a fight, and then she was found dead, Okay,
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  and murdered nonetheless, not just you know, dead. As the leading suspect,
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  he was offered quote unquote offered to take this polygraph lie detector test,
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  and when he took it, he failed it, indicating that he was lying
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  about what he was saying. Okay. However, in court, the remaining
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  evidence about whether or not he had been the one who had committed this crime
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  was insufficient to convict him. But because of this incident with the polygraph,
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  his friends and his family really just wanted nothing to do with them. They
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  were, you know, they were angry at him. They believed that he
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  had lied and sort of tricked the system that he was in fact guilty.
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  And what was interesting is later they found the actual killer and they had the
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  evidence to convict him of the crime. But this guy, his life at
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  that point had already been ruined and it was because of this failed polygraph test
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  and this particular situation. It's rough, yeah, super rough. Not a
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  great day for that guy. I'm sure this took place over the course of
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  a year or two at least. Now. We've already talked about lying in
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  a previous episode, and one thing that we had brought up in that episode
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  is how do you know when someone's lying? Like, is it that thing
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  where you look up into the left or something that it's supposed to be you're
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  accessing the creative part of your brain? Yea? Is it something that we
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  can measure? And spoiler alert, mostly we can't. But this particular story
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  about the polygraph is one experiment in an attempt to try and measure lying where
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  and if it occurs. Okay, So, as I already said, the
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  polygraph is a quote unquote lie detector test, all right, And it's primarily
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  predicated on this idea that when people lie, they experience emotional distress about their
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  line and that these emotions have physiological corelates with them. Well, this is
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  a pretty key thing here, Yeah, exactly. So basically, the idea
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  is that if I'm lying, then my heart rate's going to increase, and
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  i might sweat a little bit, and I'm going to be nervous about the
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  fact that I'm lying, maybe because I'm afraid of being caught or just because
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  it's distressful. Full line. Yeah, you also have elevated breathing that happens.
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  Yeah, and blood pressure is supposed to increase. I think the one
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  that we can alterlate to probably at some point is the increased heart rate as
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  well. Yeah, that's something you can really feel really easily. Sure.
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  Now, as we mentioned lying, there's a lot of considerations around what that
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  even is, because if you're withholding the truth, is that line, if
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  you are misleading someone, is that line? Is it possible that you know
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  that you're lying, but it doesn't cause you any emotional distress because there could
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  be a lot of reasons self preservation or you feel you're doing something in the
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  best interest of someone else, or there could be a lot of reasons that
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  you might be lying. And let's go another route. On this. What
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  are some circumstances under which you might also have perspiration, elevated breathing, increased
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  heart rate, and increased blood pressure. I mean the one that I think
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  of the most is like, what if you're wearing like a big heavy suit
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  that day that you like send in to do this, right, and the
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  AC's broken, Like, all of a sudden, I'm gonna be perspirating a
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  lot now. They like, we'll get into it. They have some contro
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  role measures, Yeah, but there's a lot of variables external to just the
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  way that things typically set up. People might have a similar experience when they're
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  about to perform, if they're going to present something in front of a group
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  of people. Yep, speaking is one of them. If you have anything
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  personal going on in your life that like stress can easily be triggered by just
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  about anything, right, totally, this could be a similar experience if you're
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  really excited about something you just walked in and surprise birthday party, you know
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  your friends are there, you know a lot of this increased arousal generally as
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  what happened, And I know they're used a lot when we're talking about different
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  jobs. Right, So in the context a lot of government jobs I guess
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  are not a lot, but in the context of some government jobs at the
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  NSA, they are used there reportedly to extend to it. I don't know
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  exactly, but yeah, if you're like super into this job that you're looking
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  forward to, like I've been in that position where you're just like, emotions
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  are everywhere, right when you're in the actual interview. Yeah, oh yeah,
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  high stakes. You really want to get the job, you are going
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  to have this, you know, the sweating and you're breathing hard and all
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  that sort of stuff. Yeah. Sometimes it's things you've prepared for for like
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  half your life. Yeah, and that's the day, you know, right,
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  So totally. And one other one I always think is fun is that
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  this can happen in the throws of passion. You're with someone that you care
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  about my experiencing some of this as well. Throws of passion. Yep,
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  we're putting it. Okay, all right, So how this machine actually works?
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  They're mostly on computers anymore. Their software programs that used to be this
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  totally analog device that had all these needles that would like scribble back and forth
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  on a piece of paper, But they still use the same kind of sensors,
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  and what they are is there's this blood pressure cough that just fits around
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  the upper arm, and that's going to check for both your pulse and your
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  blood pressure. There are these what are called galvanometers and those go on your
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  finger, the weanometers galvanometers. I like that, I was probably I admit
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  it's that. So they fit on your finger and they indirectly measure skin conductance
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  as an indirect measure associated with perspiration on the fingers. It goes on your
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  first and third finger for some reason. Okay, I wonder why. Maybe
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  it's I'm not sure. That's what I've found through some of my research.
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  I don't know if that's consistent. Yeah, that's okay. They also have
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  this thing called a new monograph, and this is a little coil that fits
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  around your chest and it actually works a little bit like an accordion, where
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  as you breathe, it will open up the passage and then will constrict the
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  passage as your chest goes in and out. And what that does is those
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  compressions are then converted into electrical signals and those are measured in terms of your
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  rate of breathing, and so basically you can see all of these measures of
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  the skin galvanation and your lungs and how quickly you're breathing. All of those
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  things can have these small changes in them that might be difficult to detect if
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  you were just looking at someone, but if you have the sensitive equipment,
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  could really powerfully detect those changes that are going on in your body. And
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  this is really measuring the activity of what's called the sympathetic or in volunte Harry
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  nervous system. Okay, So the parts where it's just your reaction to things.
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  It's not thinking something that you're deliberately controlling per se, although I suppose
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  you could. And this is then based on the idea that those experiences that
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  you have that we've already talked a lot about are based in fear, okay,
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  And specifically it is when you ask the relevant question of someone who is
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  then going to be in a position to have to lie, that there is
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  some fear of those questions that they're going to have to lie about. Yeah,
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  it's a very big assumption, they're right. Right. So, in
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  the case of the story we started with, if there was this guy who
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  was a leading suspect in a murder case, and they set him down,
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  and they're going to ask him, did you murder? I don't know what
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  her name was. I want to call her Jessica. Did you murder Jessica?
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  And that question in and of itself is supposed to create this fear that
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  is then going to show this increased heart rate if he has to lie about
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  it, and blood pressure and all that. So it's Stevin exactly how this
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  works. Yeah, So the process of how they go about actually implementing the
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  quote unquote lie detection. So there's two types of questions, right, there's
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  irrelevant and control questions. Yeah, describe control questions first? What are those
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  looking like? So the control questions are questions that you shouldn't have any reason
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  to be concerned about, And the purpose of these is really to get a
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  sort of baseline in terms of what your physiological arousal is alike. So it'll
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  be things like is your name Ryan? And I would answer and strictly yes,
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  no is what we found? Yeah, thank you for Yeah. So
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  yeah, so I would say no, Okay, I'm kidding. Is my
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  name Ryan? Yes? Okay? Do you live at I don't know what
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  your addresses? Do you live in Reno? Yes? Okay, and so
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  these are questions that are very simple, they're straightforward, and that we can
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  get you know, because everybody's going to be at a slightly different level in
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  terms of what their baseline blood pressure and heart rate and skin galvanization is.
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  That way that we can see where they're starting to be deviations from that.
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  If the person who's administering this test is concerned that you're lying, then they're
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  going to be specifically looking for those deviations. Okay, so that's our control
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  questions. Now, our relevant questions actually pertained to the issue at hand,
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  right, right, So there's some sort of event that happens when your story
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  the murder of Jessica would be where the relevant questions are coming from. Correct,
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  Yeah, exactly, And so those are questions. They're usually very straightforward.
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  Did you murder her? Were you in the apartment at this time?
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  That sort of thing. The questions that I just gave examples of are extremely
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  specific. These are often, well, at least sometimes I saw very broad.
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  So the question might be something like have you ever betrayed someone who trusted
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  you at any point in your life? Yeah? I saw that as well.
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  Yeah, and so that's a question where you might have to say yes,
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  I saw them. Also, like they'd put in a timeframe, so
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  like, have you ever stole anything after the age of twenty five? Oh?
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  Okay, you know interesting? Yeah, so it's still could be pretty
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  general. And then what do you mean by still I've stolen people's time?
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  You know, still win people's hearts? Are these ads lying to you?
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  Probably let's find out, all right, we're back. So yeah, so
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  we have the relevant questions and then they compare these relevant to the control questions
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  across all those different measures. As my understanding, yep. What else I
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  kind of found was it's roughly five to six minutes long on average, although
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  there's these like horror stories of them lasting forever and ever and ever, so
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  they're kind of short. But the majority of people that experience them upfront,
• 15:31
  for like n SA or something like that, report like that they hear all
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  these things of a horrible we are but they go through and they're just like,
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  oh, it's really quick, it was easy. It was really short.
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  I've heard that on average, there's a few different three to six charts.
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  It sounds like that are that are looked at and they do not give
• 15:46
  the final results while you're in the office, although most can seem to agree
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  that if the the easiest way to detect if you may have not passed is
• 15:56
  if they start asking more questions in moment, you know, Oh, the
• 16:00
  person who's administering it, the polygrapher, might start asking more questions on a
• 16:06
  certain topic, and that might be a consistent way to identify if you may
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  have not passed one of those questions. You know, I didn't actually think
• 16:11
  about the idea that the person who's administering a polygraph would be called a polygrapher.
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  Yeah, that's funny. On top of that, they also have yes
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  no as their answers. It looks like it's really strict yes knows. I
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  would assume that's supposed to be a control as well on this. It would
• 16:26
  make sense you try to like limit those things. But I don't know.
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  Yeah, I didn't actually find why they would be yes no questions. I
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  was wondering if maybe it is that it's the immediate response, and they're trying
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  to look for like, what are the changes right when that response occurs,
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  And so if they launched in this big, long story, then it might
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  be really difficult to detect whether or not they're is deception in there. Yeah,
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  and we get into this they talk about sometimes it's more of an art
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  or there's a bit of an art, So I wonder if that's intersecting here,
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  but we'll get to that in a bed. That's always a sort of
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  a red flag to me. Yeah, So to kind of get back to
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  it, they give the final they don't give the final results in the moment.
• 17:03
  They like to give it to someone I heard with a quote unbiased I
• 17:08
  I I don't really know what an unbiased ie is. Yeah, I was
• 17:11
  just going to ask you what does that mean? So presumably they have to
• 17:15
  give it to someone who has read a polygraph before, but maybe just someone
• 17:18
  who wasn't present during that particular polygraph tests. You think, yeah, it
• 17:23
  sounds like it. Okay, so I kind of like the control of that,
• 17:26
  but yeah, you know, like that process, but still like an
• 17:30
  unbiased I yea, or we're all really unbiased at the end of the day,
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  argued No, So you're saying that basically a lot of people have a
• 17:37
  lot of different biases and we may or may not know that they're there.
• 17:40
  Yeah, I mean, we really don't know that. There's some research on
• 17:41
  those sort of things. Yeah, and there's still a lot to be done
• 17:44
  in that area. Yes, there is. So sometimes it sounds like they
• 17:49
  give an opportunity to resolve an issue if it comes up, So if there's
• 17:53
  some sort of weird spike or something, they will ask a little bit more.
• 17:56
  Now, this is where it gets a little wishue washy. Like when
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  I was looking around the internet, you find those old websites that just start
• 18:03
  like really up to date, and they're clearly biased towards something. So a
• 18:07
  lot of people scream like, this is where interrogation happens. I don't know
• 18:11
  the extent to which interrogation happens in these you know, and it's like those
• 18:15
  movie scenes where you're like slide up and you're like it's all super intense and
• 18:18
  they're in there for hours and they're asking all these questions about you know,
• 18:22
  like in a very interrogative way. Right. That actually raises the point that
• 18:26
  I didn't bring up before, which is that where this is primarily used has
• 18:30
  to do with crimes of some nature. There are some other places where it
• 18:34
  has been used in the past but is not used any longer. I'll get
• 18:37
  to. But for the most part, this has been used when someone is
• 18:41
  presumed to have done something wrong, they are suspected of some wrongdoing or committing
• 18:47
  some crime or some terrorist act. So it could actually be used for people
• 18:49
  who are being held for interrogation for really serious offenses, and it could be
• 18:55
  used for people who for which they're sort of minor defenses, or for even
• 18:59
  something that's not an offense at all, which I'll get to in just a
• 19:02
  little bit. So I've heard that sometimes they do a practice test to help
• 19:04
  people get used to the test. Interesting, I don't know, again,
• 19:10
  like this is that stuff where it's like it's hearsay, Like I'm pulling these
• 19:12
  off of websites. I'm seeing it consistent across websites and videos, videos both
• 19:17
  kind of like produced by larger organizations that seem pretty solid, as well as
• 19:22
  like those weird little clips of someone clearly just like has it out for this
• 19:26
  a poligrapher or something like that it's going on. But that's kind of interesting
• 19:30
  that they would have the opportunity to practice, because it seems like that would
• 19:33
  potentially lead to more sort of false positives, detecting lines where they aren't actually
• 19:37
  lies, yeah, or getting people maybe ready for where they are so ready
• 19:44
  to take the test that they're going to be better at line and able to
• 19:45
  trick it later down the road. I don't know. That just seems like
• 19:48
  maybe they're maybe the practice test is specifically to throw them off so that it's
• 19:52
  easier to detect it. I don't know. Yeah, And that's it,
• 19:56
  Like there's there's all those questions that come up, and anti polyg draft dot
• 20:00
  org was one of the areas where they were talking about this, but it's
• 20:02
  strictly in a forum and they're linking to some things, but it's not like
• 20:06
  research like we like on this show. So they essentially then start asking questions
• 20:11
  looking for sudden changes in the measures that are supposedly indicative of falsehood. Now,
• 20:15
  there were some assumptions that I ran into, and these are just kind
• 20:18
  of like it seems people are assuming these things consistently in this setting. First,
• 20:23
  they assume that their baseline is accurate and those measures are accurate, right,
• 20:27
  And one thing that kind of popped up here was one person said like,
• 20:30
  oh, it takes more energy to lie through brain scan research. We
• 20:34
  know this. That reminds me of this idea. If you in the show,
• 20:40
  the US version of the Office Dwight goes to do a polygraph or a
• 20:44
  lie detector test on Jim, but he doesn't actually have a polygraph. So
• 20:47
  what he does is takes him down to a pharmacy and puts his arm in
• 20:49
  a blood pressure cuff and starts asking him these questions. And at the end
• 20:55
  he said, you know, his blood pressure was high the entire time,
• 20:57
  and so he's like he lied about everything, even as so he didn't have
• 21:02
  a baseline comparison. But it was funny that because he had seen increased blood
• 21:04
  pressure during that in that particular instance, someone who was a polographer would have
• 21:10
  assumed that that baseline was accurate. And so that makes me wonder about people
• 21:15
  who already have like sort of heavy breathing and high blood pressure, if their
• 21:18
  baseline is going to be so high that detections increases of that would actually be
• 21:23
  a little bit difficult to measure because it'd be so high in the first place.
• 21:26
  Yeah, and the fact that they're kind of like this one gentleman was
• 21:30
  like resting on the brain scan research as to like why some of these assumptions
• 21:36
  are okay. It made me a little bit nervous, especially after what we
• 21:37
  did on looking at the evidence of those sort of things. I think in
• 21:41
  like episode six or so, when we kind of dove in the fMRI and
• 21:44
  such, well, there was a whole book called Brainwashed, The Seductive Appeal
• 21:48
  of Mindless Neuroscience, and there was a significant portion of that book was dedicated
• 21:53
  to the problems with trying to use brain scans to do like lie detect sort
• 22:00
  of stuff, because based on the conclusions of that book, they were arguing
• 22:03
  that we as a society and in the science community are nowhere near where the
• 22:11
  research needs to be in order for this to be a potentially viable situation,
• 22:15
  like even less accurate than just measuring physiological responses, because line is not just
• 22:21
  one place in the brain where things happen. It's very complicated and as you
• 22:26
  said, it depends on sort of your relationship with the lie and whether or
• 22:30
  not you're sort of trying to hide the truth. And there's a lot of
• 22:33
  things that go into when a lie takes place. But it's a really good
• 22:37
  book. I'd recommend checking it out. Brainwashed. I believe the authors are
• 22:40
  Sally Satoll and Scott O Lillianfeld. Okay, cool, Yeah, I've not
• 22:45
  read that sounds very interesting and relevant. It's actually really interesting book to read,
• 22:48
  and because they did so much on this whole idea of using brain scans
• 22:52
  to do like lie detection stuff and how difficult those are to use and how
• 22:57
  unreliable they are, really it's I think it's a good source for people who
• 23:00
  are interested in exploring this issue a little bit more cool. All right,
• 23:03
  So, another thing I found is there's some folks that are saying that there's
• 23:07
  kind of this correlation of the bigger the issue, the bigger the lie,
• 23:10
  the bigger the reaction is how it works. So this is one of those
• 23:12
  assumptions. Yeah, And I don't know if we can assume that, especially
• 23:17
  since there's some evidence of people being able to kind of get around these sort
• 23:21
  of tests when they have committed the crime or at least have been proved guilty
• 23:26
  through other means such as like DNA and such. So presumably in this one,
• 23:30
  the implication is that people who are lying about something really important are very
• 23:37
  likely to be caught in that lie. People who are lying something about maybe
• 23:41
  something not so important, are maybe less likely to be caught. But I
• 23:44
  think that the evidence is not necessarily in support of that. Yeah, and
• 23:48
  that's something we should be able to start to throw some numbers at. I
• 23:51
  guess we don't need using these words like bigger, yeah, right, yes,
• 23:55
  although it was I guess. I mean, if they're using that for
• 23:57
  the sake of just kind of this psa around it, then maybe that's why
• 24:00
  they did that. But yeah, I would expect some numbers at some point.
• 24:03
  So in addition to those, there's one gentleman, and I'm kind of
• 24:08
  paraphrasing here, said sometimes it's something that they have to look at closer,
• 24:11
  Like if someone answers one of those relevant questions in a little bit of a
• 24:15
  funny way and they see a spike on any of these measures, and sometimes
• 24:18
  it's super clear. Now that's where it was followed with. These things are
• 24:22
  based in science, but sometimes there's an art that goes into it, right,
• 24:27
  and that always raises red flags for me. And they go on to
• 24:32
  indicate that the questions and the order matter. They don't know how they matter.
• 24:37
  Yeah, but there's a lot of people who looked into this one that
• 24:40
  I hold on too tightly. It was a guy named gold Diamond that essentially
• 24:44
  is just looking at surveys the order in which you asked things, and he
• 24:47
  showed that you can stack it up to show an effect if you want to
• 24:51
  show an effect, or you can order him around and show that there's no
• 24:53
  effect. Yeah. So basically that you can sort of get the outcome you
• 24:56
  want if you order the questions in a certain way. Yep. Yeah,
• 25:00
  And his was survey work, so I will say it was different than the
• 25:02
  type of work that they're doing here, but the fact that we have seen
• 25:04
  that consistently applied in one domain means that we should definitely look at it in
• 25:08
  here, especially if the main people that are doing these sort of things kind
• 25:11
  of have this gut reaction of like this stuff matters. Probably does. Yeah,
• 25:15
  I think that even if it's a little bit different, it's at least
• 25:18
  worth being aware of. You know that that could be the thing, and
• 25:21
  that's similar enough, and that you are trying to get information from somebody.
• 25:25
  I think that that sort of context is similar such that it just needs to
• 25:29
  be considered how that order might play part and use some of the research and
• 25:32
  related fields to guide the work on that. Now, the last area of
• 25:37
  kind of assumptions that I found was that so there's verious different countermeasures that people
• 25:41
  can do and then it sounds like they know what these are. I mean,
• 25:45
  I expect they can predict some of these, but they can also identify
• 25:48
  some of them through the spikes that they produce. So different counter measures that
• 25:52
  have been used, apparently are counting numbers backwards in your head can help counter
• 25:57
  something. When you're lying, it sounds like it's like you're concentrating on something
• 26:00
  else so you are not so distracted by the lie or the question that's relevant.
• 26:06
  Yeah, now another one. Squeezing of the buttocks apparently will produce an
• 26:10
  effect. Placing your toes, your feet more heavily into the ground can do
• 26:15
  that is produce some sort of effect holding your breath, altering your breath pattern.
• 26:19
  Biting lips and gums can help to deceive I guess as well and cause
• 26:23
  different blips in the graph. And they say it's difficult to do these things
• 26:29
  effectively, Okay, but I would say it's not impossible. Right. It
• 26:33
  seems that this is something to under the realm of this area of human behavior
• 26:38
  that we like to talk about, that could be controlled for right, Yeah,
• 26:42
  or learned or practiced and adaptive on and you could get better at it.
• 26:47
  Well, it makes me think about going back to the idea of the
• 26:48
  control questions and how some of these other mental and physical I guess events might
• 26:53
  take place. Thinking about even if you ask someone something simple like is your
• 26:59
  name X, and then maybe you have a reaction to that because you share
• 27:04
  the same name with your father or your mother or something, and you have
• 27:08
  a strained relationship with them, and so like, immediately there's some anxiety produced
• 27:12
  because you're thinking, yes, that's my name, I hate my name,
• 27:15
  this sort of thing. But immediately there's this, you know, a physical
• 27:18
  reaction, so that your baseline level is so high because you have all these
• 27:22
  reactions to what are supposed to be control questions that then, again going back
• 27:26
  to that idea of someone who comes in already having high blood pressure, the
• 27:30
  changes that might occur relative to those control questions might be so small that they'd
• 27:33
  be missed and just undetected. And you know, I guess someone could also
• 27:38
  do that intentionally, you know, try and make themselves think of something that
• 27:41
  causes that during those baseline control questions, although I think they try and sort
• 27:45
  of pepper them in. So it's like control and relevant questions a little bit
• 27:48
  that I'm not sure about In terms of the process. But I think that's
• 27:52
  how it's supposed to work. That's what I've found as well. Okay,
• 27:55
  great, all of these things could either be strategies or something that someone does
• 27:57
  on accident. You know, you might be sitting there and just be in
• 28:02
  the situation where someone's asking you these questions. Maybe you're a fidgety person and
• 28:06
  you put your toes on the ground and you kind of put yourself on the
• 28:07
  edge of your chair. You know, they might even advise you to try
• 28:11
  and sit comfortably, but you still have some of these immediate reactions to the
• 28:15
  particular situation of being interrograded with a bunch of stuff hooked up to your body
• 28:18
  exactly. And that's what I want to bring up, that they are assuming
• 28:22
  that these things are being done because someone is lying, right, and we
• 28:25
  can't assume that. I think, yes, So a good example and wait
• 28:29
  for us kind of transition I think would be There was a particular National Geographic
• 28:33
  YouTube video called Beating a Lie Detector Test. I didn't know that it was
• 28:37
  obviously part of this larger series and they were just kind of doing more of
• 28:41
  this kind of like PSA on like you know, like they do like helping
• 28:45
  people help. They're creating content to help people learn more about things that are
• 28:48
  happening in the world, right, so I'm not dogging on him per se.
• 28:52
  They essentially set up to where one of the guys, the host he's
• 28:56
  presumably dropped a game console, is brought in physically drop it, dropped a
• 29:02
  game console, broke it, and they're going to bring him in for a
• 29:04
  polygraph test and he needs to he needs to try to counter it and see
• 29:08
  if he can like pass it. So he did a couple of things.
• 29:11
  I tried putting a pin in his shoe so he could step on it and
• 29:15
  increase stress prior to all this happening, like during his control questions. It's
• 29:19
  related to what I said earlier. Yes, And then he tried putting anti
• 29:22
  pursprint on his fingers. Now, apparently the anti perspint increases conductivity. I
• 29:29
  don't know the extent to which it does, and the pin and issue created
• 29:33
  a different type of spike they reported. Okay, so obviously, I guess
• 29:37
  if you're there's a couple angals on this, I feel like you if you're
• 29:38
  looking at this as like evidence, it's not, and they are, I
• 29:41
  think would say yes, this is not evidence for you know, it's not
• 29:45
  research that they're doing here right at all, just sort of a demonstration.
• 29:48
  Yeah, and we can't look at those sort of things. But it was
• 29:49
  also just completely fabricated, you know, I can't. There's there's so many
• 29:55
  errors in this that about all it is is this kind psa sort of thing.
• 30:00
  So was he able to pass the light detector No, he did not
• 30:03
  pass the light detector tests because they identified apparently different types of spikes doing that.
• 30:11
  But for me, like them, fabricating the lie in the first place
• 30:14
  makes it something hard to even look at the results. Right, that's not
• 30:17
  a super well controlled experiment. So while this ad break plays, don't listen
• 30:21
  to it, don't listen to the band lies instead. And we're back.
• 30:32
  So what are some of the different data, research articles or evidence that you
• 30:38
  found looking at this. So those who are really for the polygraph tests,
• 30:44
  so they're in favor of it, they promote it. These tend to be
• 30:45
  the people who do the work. They are polygraphers, but there are others
• 30:49
  as well, in law enforcement and whatnot. But those who do it,
• 30:52
  they seem to really believe in it completely. They firmly believe in this process
• 30:56
  as being effective. They even started their own journal called Polygraph, which was
• 31:00
  appropriately named, and they claim ninety five percent accuracy. And I'm just looking
• 31:07
  at that number thinking, oh my god, like law enforcement's job is over.
• 31:11
  You know, they don't have to worry about this anymore because they've got
• 31:14
  this amazing tool that's ninety five percent accurate. Correct me if I'm wrong.
• 31:18
  It's still not allowed in a court a lot, right anyway, And some
• 31:19
  of them, yeah, I'm gonna get to that in just a moment.
• 31:22
  Yeah, there are some that do still allow that. Really, Yeah,
• 31:26
  okay, But they do also claim that there is a nearly one hundred percent
• 31:29
  chance of being cleared if you're telling the truth and a ninety five percent chance
• 31:33
  of being detected if you're telling a lie. So those are fabulous numbers.
• 31:37
  Yeah, if that was accurate, then I think that this should you know,
• 31:41
  this could be used in basically every setting for which it's reasonable to try
• 31:44
  and do some kind of light detection. Now, those who are not for
• 31:48
  the polygraph are not just out there being naysayers, like we just wanted to
• 31:53
  pick something to fight against, and this is the thing that we landed on.
• 31:56
  But these are people who also work in law enforcement and people or scientists
• 32:00
  and psych psychologists. One of the things that they say against the polygraph is
• 32:05
  that the polygraph doesn't actually identify whether or not you're telling the truth, or
• 32:09
  more importantly, what the truth is. It will only tell you if you're
• 32:13
  lying, assuming that it's accurate in that. So they might ask them if
• 32:17
  you have ever been to this one particular location and they say no, or
• 32:22
  they say yes, I don't know whatever it is and it turns out to
• 32:25
  be a lie. Well, that just tells you, you know, a
• 32:28
  little bit more information about that. It doesn't tell you any specific details,
• 32:30
  right, or you know where a particular event took place. If it took
• 32:35
  place here, no, did it take place here? No? Did it
• 32:37
  take place here no? If any of those were true, for example,
• 32:40
  then we don't necessarily know where it did take place. So it's difficult and
• 32:45
  that all it really does is reveal whether or not there is a lie,
• 32:47
  assuming that it's accurate in doing that. Another one, and this is important
• 32:52
  because this goes to the major underlying premise of the polygraph is that medical science
• 32:57
  has never found any measurable emotional respe that could reliably be linked to lying.
• 33:01
  There just isn't one. So this idea that if you have elevated blood pressure
• 33:06
  or increased skin conductance of perspiration, or any of those other measures that they
• 33:09
  are employing, that that means that someone is lying. There are lots of
• 33:14
  circumstances where we have those emotional responses and we can't necessarily link them to lying,
• 33:19
  even in this context in the medical science. Okay, and as a
• 33:23
  sort of thought experiment, this is something a little bit different. What is
• 33:28
  the lowest possible rate of accuracy on this? Because this is a yes no
• 33:31
  measure, right, so they could either get a true or false dichotomis,
• 33:35
  So it's it's one or the other. What is the lowest possible accuracy that
• 33:38
  this could have? Yeah, because if it was lower than that, if
• 33:43
  it was reliably like one percent, then it would be so wildly and accurate
• 33:47
  that you could actually use that to just flip it and say that that was
• 33:52
  accurate in the opposite direction. Yeah, So like this one is you know
• 33:54
  one hundred percent almost always always detected that it was the truth when it was
• 33:58
  a lie. Then we look at that, Okay, well, now we
• 34:00
  just know that that means that when we see this thing that is one percent
• 34:02
  of the truth, it means that they're lying, because that's always that way.
• 34:05
  It's reliable. So you're sitting this up perfectly. What's the research to
• 34:07
  say? So when people have done some of the really good controlled studies on
• 34:13
  this, they found about sixty seven percent accuracy for the polygraph when detecting the
• 34:17
  lie. But what they did then is they continued to explore that this is
• 34:21
  initially right. So the polygraph came out, there's obviously a lot of people
• 34:23
  who had a lot of interest in really determining just how accurate this was,
• 34:28
  and so just out of curiosity, we followed the scientific process and discover sixty
• 34:32
  seven percent accuracy. That's not great, a little lower than the nine five
• 34:36
  percent, but it's still better than half. Okay. Yeah, And so
• 34:37
  then when they continue to do more research, they got better controls, they
• 34:42
  got more clever and how they arranged those variables, so it was really detecting
• 34:45
  whether or not it was accurate. Got it down to fifty two percent accuracy.
• 34:50
  This is literally as inaccurate as it could possibly be without it actually being
• 34:54
  informative and the opposite direction, right, So it's not good. Yeah,
• 35:01
  you know, at this point, it's a toss of a coin. You
• 35:04
  know, if someone was lying or telling the truth, you could flip a
• 35:06
  coin, it would be as accurate as this test is if you got you
• 35:08
  know, heads or tails. Yeah, And there was one of the videos
• 35:12
  that I was sampling from was a guy who reportedly worked within some government agency
• 35:16
  and then transferred out across twenty thirty years. It sounds like he worked there
• 35:21
  for twenties years, and this thing was he was starting to teach people and
• 35:24
  show that you can actually beat these sort of things cause a lot of problems.
• 35:29
  He was actually being sentenced. I don't know where that ended up at.
• 35:32
  Yeah, there was the other guy who went to prison for teaching people
• 35:37
  at the past. It might be the same guy that sounds like it,
• 35:38
  but his thing, he was a little bold about it was just you know,
• 35:43
  you grab a quarter and you flip it heads, you're telling the truth,
• 35:46
  tales, you're lying, And that's how he opened it and just saying
• 35:49
  like that's where the research is at. So yeah, I definitely saw that
• 35:52
  as well. So another argument that those who are against the polygraph us is
• 35:55
  that when someone who is is a polygrapher who's administering this test. The more
• 36:00
  knowledge they have about the circumstances for the case, the better they are at
• 36:04
  conducting and evaluating the polygraph. But that's actually kind of true of anyone who
• 36:07
  would be doing any type of interrogation. So any cop who knows a lot
• 36:10
  about the case, who knows a lot about the information, can go in
• 36:15
  and just have a regular conversation with someone and be about as good at arranging
• 36:19
  it so that they tell the truth or that they get more details, or
• 36:22
  that they're able to sort of detect when they're lying a little bit. And
• 36:23
  that just comes from general training on how to do sort of good police work
• 36:28
  and good detective work. I guess another argument against there quite a few of
• 36:32
  them, is this fact that when you're engaging in deception, this is a
• 36:37
  verbal and cognitive task. Okay, but there is no direct measure of these
• 36:43
  sort of verbal cognitive tasks where it's just your own sort of self expression,
• 36:50
  And so when you're trying to measure something like someone's physiology, that is not
• 36:52
  a measure of those cognitive processes. That sort of language element of this,
• 36:59
  right, and the language itself doesn't necessarily help because that's what you're trying to
• 37:01
  detach. Yeah, and so it's sort of a mismatch between what your measurement
• 37:06
  system is and the thing that you're actually trying to measure. Okay, now
• 37:09
  I'm not sure how much I agree with this is its own, but another
• 37:13
  one that they say is that there's not very much training required to administer a
• 37:16
  polygraph. I saw I think it was like six weeks maybe of polygraph testing
• 37:22
  as someone that said fourteen weeks. Okay, so it's probably arranged depending on
• 37:24
  where you're at. And I didn't dive into it. And we know from
• 37:27
  learning, right that there's so many multitudes of or different variables that go into
• 37:31
  learning quickly or not, and right all that that I'm not gonna yeah,
• 37:36
  like we wouldn't slam necessarily in the length of time. Yeah, it's you
• 37:38
  know, for safe, it's are you being trained to confidency in these sort
• 37:42
  of things. And that was exactly my thought on this, was this fact
• 37:45
  that you know, if you are really really well structured curriculum around this,
• 37:51
  then you might be able to more effectively teach someone how to use this in
• 37:53
  one day than someone who has really poor curriculum can in six months, and
• 37:58
  so the length of time doesn't tell me a lot about it really would be
• 38:00
  whether or not they demonstrate some level, as you said, of competency with
• 38:04
  this. The last one is the story there was apparently the spy. He
• 38:08
  was an international spy, and he was able to pass five polygraphs. That
• 38:13
  seems like a lot to me, but he passed all five of them about
• 38:16
  his activities as a spy. And this is also interesting because this goes back
• 38:21
  to this idea that we had discussed previously about sort of the bigger the lie,
• 38:24
  the bigger the circumstances, the bigger the event. Well, this is
• 38:28
  a guy lying about essentially like international espionage and potentially terrorism and weapons and all
• 38:34
  that sort of thing. So these were in what I would think to be
• 38:37
  really big lies, but he was able to pass off five of them.
• 38:39
  And then he would he described just how easy it was, that it was,
• 38:44
  you know, very low effort for him after he was caught later with
• 38:46
  actual evidence and circumstances. He said, polygraph tests are quote junk science,
• 38:52
  a superstition and a refuge from responsibility. So strong words, very strong words,
• 38:58
  but you know he's kind it's coming straight from the horse's mouth in this
• 39:01
  case, because he's the one who knows how they work enough that he can
• 39:05
  beat them with ease and did it multiple times. Five times, but so
• 39:08
  many. Okay, there's some other considerations about using the polygraph tests as a
• 39:13
  lie detection system and whether or not that is a reliable way of detecting lies,
• 39:17
  And one of those is that when you're in these sort of high intensity
• 39:21
  contexts and situations where you are being scrutinized and questioned and interrogated by some authority
• 39:28
  figure in a dark room or some uncomfortable place, and it's about these extremely
• 39:32
  sensitive topics, that's enough to put anyone on edge and on high alert.
• 39:37
  You know, this implies that there's likely to be sort of a high number
• 39:40
  of false positives because people are just reacting to things in general, and if
• 39:45
  you're already anticipating one of those relevant questions whether or not it's something that you
• 39:51
  are going to be lying about, like these are, it's really sensitive.
• 39:53
  So if I were to just ask you just sitting here, did you kill
• 39:58
  Jessica? Obviously you didn't, but like in an interrogation setting, that might
• 40:01
  might be enough to set you off because like whoa like, that's a really
• 40:05
  intense question to be asked. Yeah, and so the experience that you have
• 40:07
  just being in that context is likely to have the kind of arousal that might
• 40:12
  lead to the detection of a lie where one didn't actually occur. Like surveys
• 40:15
  have shown that many, many people in sort of the lay public really believe
• 40:20
  that this is a legitimate way of testing for and detecting falsehoods and people who
• 40:25
  are who are lying in these circumstances, and for law enforcement. Yeah,
• 40:29
  I mean, it seems likely that if you, you know, start to
• 40:32
  get some more direct measures around something, especially if you don't have a lot
• 40:37
  of experience, looking at the likelihood that those actually really measure what we think
• 40:42
  they're measuring, it looks like it's a lot better of a measurement system,
• 40:45
  right, I completely agree. I was looking at this thinking it kind of
• 40:47
  makes sense when you had absolutely nothing before for someone to come in and say,
• 40:51
  wait, let's let's look at some objective measures. We can directly measure
• 40:54
  things like you're breathing in your blood pressure on your heart rate, and so
• 40:59
  all they had to do it was then make a huge leap and assumptions that
• 41:02
  those things were indicative of lies. Now they're great equipment, maybe for medical
• 41:07
  testing, but maybe not so much for lies. But yeah, a lot
• 41:09
  of people really believe in them, and they do overcome that obstacle of really
• 41:14
  subjective interpretation to more objective measures. The problem is those objective measures aren't measuring
• 41:20
  lies. Another consideration in here, and this goes back to that guy,
• 41:22
  is that a single failure of a lie detection test, even of the smallest
• 41:27
  thing, well maybe not the smallest, but you know, of something that's
• 41:30
  even a little bit relevant for someone, can completely ruin someone's life. And
• 41:35
  it's really this catch twenty two because if you refuse to take the test,
• 41:38
  then it looks like you're guilty. So imagine you're in this situation where you
• 41:44
  go into a place where you have to get a lie detection test. You
• 41:46
  already know from the research that there's a high probability that there's going to be
• 41:50
  a false positive. It's going to be assumed that you're lying even when you're
• 41:53
  not, especially because it's those high intensity circumstances, and so you might want
• 41:59
  to refuse. But then you, oh, if you refuse, that looks
• 42:00
  like an admission of guilt. So then you take the test, but then
• 42:02
  it pegs you as being a liar anyway, because those false positives like that
• 42:07
  sucks. Yeah, you're so stuck in that situation. What do you do?
• 42:10
  And there's a lot of problems around this with employment screening. This is
• 42:15
  no longer allowed at all to be used in employment screening, and actually the
• 42:21
  law specifically states not only can they not use a polygraph when they're hiring people,
• 42:24
  but they cannot go back and look at an old polygraph that they may
• 42:28
  have taken in the hiring process because they might be just looking for whether or
• 42:31
  not their line or telling the truth. And there's so many problems with this
• 42:35
  that you just can't use it. There's a lot of false positives, it's
• 42:37
  not reliable, and it's kind of an invasion of someone's privacy as well.
• 42:42
  They also might end up learning information that isn't relevant to the performance at work,
• 42:46
  that is very personal to that person. It'd almost be like looking at
• 42:49
  their medical records before you hire someone. That's also, you know, not
• 42:52
  something you can do, yeah, because that's personal information. But what's interesting
• 42:55
  about that is that you can still use a polygraph test for security positions,
• 43:00
  even for the FBI, CIA, and n s A, which is weird
• 43:04
  because it's the government who put that restriction in place in the first place.
• 43:07
  So I don't know. Yeah, there's a degree to which they're still believed
• 43:09
  to be effective, right, Yeah, or worthwhile on those processes. Yeah,
• 43:13
  it's cool. I'm not in those I respect it at this level,
• 43:15
  you know, sure, I get it. Maybe we'll see some day if
• 43:17
  I'm ever working there. That's fair. I can't see that happening, but
• 43:22
  it's possible. Yeah. Now, one thing that's interesting that's a consideration around
• 43:25
  the use of the polygraph is that as many as twenty five to fifty percent
• 43:30
  of people who are actually guilty and go in for a polygraph test may still
• 43:36
  confess their guilt because of the circumstance where they believe in the polygraph, where
• 43:40
  they feel like it's they're going to be found out anyway. That's why it's
• 43:45
  still used. That could be. But the question that I ask is,
• 43:47
  like, okay, so is it worth it to have up to seventy five
• 43:52
  percent of people, you know, because we're talking about fifty So between seventy
• 43:55
  five and fifty percent of people who might be innocent being prisoned or possibly sentenced
• 44:00
  to death based on this technology. You know, is it okay if out
• 44:05
  of one hundred people, fifty of them admitted their guilt, fifty of them
• 44:08
  didn't, but all one hundred of them were killed because fifty of them were
• 44:12
  innocent, you know, like, is that okay? I think no.
• 44:15
  I would have a really hard time being okay with as Like if I were
• 44:17
  someone who was put on death row for something I didn't do because I feel
• 44:22
  the polygraph test because the technology is not that good, yeah, and then
• 44:25
  later they're like, whoops, sorry about that. Yeah, I would say
• 44:30
  I would say no upfront as well. I would love to be able to
• 44:31
  see a lot more of a history and the date on these sort of things,
• 44:35
  Like I can't imagine what you know, entities like FBI, CIA,
• 44:38
  NSA have when it comes to date on this. Everything's been recorded, Like
• 44:44
  yeah, that's like every polygraph is supposed to be recorded, right right,
• 44:46
  very true. I mean the amount of just information data that you could actually
• 44:50
  look at, like maybe there's other things back there to learn, and I'd
• 44:53
  like to learn those someday. Yeah. Sure, all right, So,
• 44:59
  as we had mentioned previously, it's inadmissible in most courts, and most states
• 45:04
  in the country. There are nineteen states that still use polygraphs, including Nevada,
• 45:08
  where are at interesting But in four of those states, both parties on
• 45:13
  both the defense and the prosecution must agree to take the polygraph test. You
• 45:17
  know, you might put that down to fifteen because there's probably going to be
• 45:21
  a lot of people who say no. But you know, between they'll say
• 45:22
  fifteen and nineteen states it is admissible in court, but there are nineteen states
• 45:28
  where it is still admissible. Well, you can practice your line and to
• 45:31
  do that, let's listen to some liars. Here are some ads. All
• 45:42
  right, let's get back to this conversation. Okay, And then the last
• 45:45
  thing I had on this in terms of considerations about about the polygraph is that
• 45:49
  there are ways of sort of hiding the truth without necessarily telling a lie.
• 45:52
  And we talked about that, I think in the Truth and Lie episodes that
• 45:55
  we did. But it's just worth considering. You can be really vague not
• 46:00
  necessarily be telling a lie. Yeah, just I can ask really vague questions
• 46:02
  and get these convoluted answers right, because although they're supposed to say yes no
• 46:07
  questions, they might say like, well no, not really but kind of
• 46:10
  or you know, and then they'll ask probing questions and it just gets them
• 46:14
  off on a sort of tangent where they're on irrelevant things that it's really easy
• 46:17
  to tell the truth about something like that. All right, So let's wrap
• 46:21
  up some take hoombs here. Okay, So, as we sort of said,
• 46:23
  this tool, this polygraph test, is less useful than just guessing with
• 46:29
  a little bit of evidence. I mean, if someone had some of the
• 46:30
  circumstances, they would be better at detecting the real information and getting information from
• 46:36
  someone in an interrogation than trying to use a polygraph test. Yeah, and
• 46:38
  even worse. You mentioned this in a you know, a few different ways,
• 46:42
  but it can straight up just ruin somebody's life, right, Yeah,
• 46:45
  someone who's innocent. If they fail a polygraph test, this can be completely
• 46:47
  damning to the rest of their life because of the stigma and how many people
• 46:52
  believe in this. So where does that leave you, Abraham My opinion about
• 46:57
  this, and I feel like I have I've tried to not be too strong
• 46:59
  about this throughout, but I think, you know, having done the research
• 47:01
  on this and understanding this topic pretty well, I really think that this is
• 47:05
  technology that just has to be abandoned. I think it's it's too dangerous in
• 47:09
  terms of getting things wrong and ruining people's lives. And I think that it's
• 47:15
  it's at best kind of a waste of time that occasionally scares people into admitting
• 47:20
  their guilt. I mean, that's the best case scenario. That's not I
• 47:22
  think a great method. Yeah it's yeah, that's not a great outcome for
• 47:25
  it either. And at the worst, it can destroy the lives of innocent
• 47:29
  people. And I mean quite literally for those who are put to death for
• 47:31
  crimes they didn't commit. And it can do this on a pretty massive scale
• 47:35
  because every you know, life that affects, there's a network of people whose
• 47:37
  lives it will also affect. I would agree with you on that up front,
• 47:40
  and then I'd just say, like, if there's a way that we
• 47:42
  could safely and like actually research this more to figure out what it is,
• 47:46
  or maybe study those archives of you know somewhere like the FBI, like if
• 47:50
  they ever release all that information someday, that would be cool. I agree,
• 47:52
  it would be cool to relook at this and understand it more from the
• 47:55
  scientific perspective. The ethical side, I agree with you there, And I
• 48:00
  mean there is sort of a bigger conversation here to have about that we're not
• 48:02
  going to try and incorporate into this discussion, but the fact that a lot
• 48:07
  of people get really satisfied with just identifying guilt. You know this, Oh,
• 48:13
  we figured out that you were lying. Okay, we can all go
• 48:15
  to bed now, and not so much of the asking the question why did
• 48:17
  this happen and how can we stop it from ever happening again. It's not
• 48:22
  necessarily as important about telling whether or not they lied, although there might be
• 48:25
  really important information to get out of that person. And I don't want to
• 48:29
  discount how critical that can be, but it can be one of those stop
• 48:32
  gap measures where people get so satisfied with having detected the truth that they are
• 48:38
  no longer interested in what causes the problem in the first place. And if
• 48:43
  we can figure out if there's a systemic issue that is causing these types of
• 48:46
  crimes and problems, like, let's get rid of that, and then if
• 48:51
  there's still problems, then we can go out this other way. But you
• 48:52
  know, I think the prevention angles is sort of where I land on that.
• 48:55
  I love it cool, all right, So that was our episode on
• 49:04
  polygraphs. Now, let's dive into some of the stuff that we either didn't
• 49:08
  cover on that discussion or has happened since then. And the first thing I'm
• 49:12
  gonna do is what I don't think that we talked about last time, which
• 49:15
  was that there is actually two different types of tests that are used and when
• 49:20
  conducting a polygraph. The first one is called the comparative question test or CQT,
• 49:24
  and that's only the most common method. That's how most people are doing
• 49:27
  the polygraph. If you imagine the polygraph test being implemented, that's probably what
• 49:30
  you're picturing. And this is the relying on physiological measures such as blood pressure,
• 49:36
  breathing, and skin conductivity also called a dermal response while asking relevant questions
• 49:43
  and control questions about some case. Right that's probably the example that you see
• 49:47
  portrayed in literally any form of media right now. Alternatively, the concealed information
• 49:53
  tests or the c I, looks for physiological changes when presented with statements of
• 49:58
  information. That is, the someone have a stronger reaction to questions that are
• 50:01
  pertinent to the investigation. And this is of course not better than CQT,
• 50:07
  and could arguably be worse because it is now not even trying to compare a
• 50:10
  verbal response to a physiological one, but just assume that any physiological response means
• 50:15
  something or maybe is better by unburdening the response from the physiological constraints. They
• 50:22
  both aren't great, I don't really, I mean, they both sound terrible.
• 50:24
  They sound like they don't work very well. Yeah, and actually like
• 50:29
  they don't. They are not completely separate. It's actually fairly common to if
• 50:32
  you're going to do the concealed information test or the ci T, you'll just
• 50:36
  do it after you've already done the comparative question test, so you can do
• 50:39
  them both in the same interview. Sure, but yeah, just the consideration
• 50:43
  of like, either you're making a statement and then trying to measure their reaction
• 50:46
  physiologically and then infer meaning from that reaction, or you're asking them a question,
• 50:52
  waiting for their answer and comparing their answer against their physiological reaction and assuming
• 50:58
  that that means something. And so one of the things that we talked about
• 51:01
  in the previous episode that you will have heard is that really the worst that
• 51:06
  you can do on this is fifty percent about fifty percent wrong, right,
• 51:09
  because if you get more wrong than fifty percent, wrong, then it's actually
• 51:13
  predictive in the in the opposite direction, meaning if you were getting things that
• 51:16
  were being registered as lies so consistently that like there were it was like less
• 51:22
  than fifty percent of the time, then you could actually reliably predict that what
• 51:25
  you were measuring as lies were actually the truth, and infer that things that
• 51:29
  were then measuring as truth were being lies. You could just simply switch the
• 51:31
  script. So fifty percent is as wrong as this could possibly be, really
• 51:37
  right. Of course, people have tried to combine polygraph tests with fMRIs.
• 51:42
  We've done an episode on fMRIs and other brains can techniques. Go back and
• 51:45
  check those out if you want like a fine grained analysis of what an fMRI
• 51:50
  is actually measuring. Because short answer is it's not your actual brain activity,
• 51:55
  right right right, something important to know there. Also, it's measuring it
• 51:59
  at a fairy zoomed out level relative to what your neurons are actually doing.
• 52:02
  Anyway, Besides the relative accuracy of fMRIs, and they've been a absolute godsend
• 52:08
  for medical research, but in terms of like understanding psychological phenomenon, I think
• 52:13
  that for a lot of people they've been a huge distraction, And so trying
• 52:15
  to combine them with polygraph tests is actually extremely dangerous for a couple of reasons.
• 52:20
  One, fMRIs do not show what someone is thinking. Imagine I said
• 52:24
  that in all caps because that is how I really, because that's how we
• 52:28
  wrote it. They do not show what someone is thinking. They don't even
• 52:30
  show a vague approximation of what someone is thinking at best, and I mean
• 52:37
  this with like heavy grain of sault at best. Why they measure is that
• 52:42
  part of the brain that is regulating the physiological responses that are already being measured
• 52:46
  by the polygraph test are sort of correlated there, and B that there's another
• 52:52
  reason that's dangerous. So I said one and one and two A and B.
• 52:55
  You know what I mean. Listen, it's one of those days.
• 52:58
  It's one of those days. Two people are so enamored with this quote unquote
• 53:01
  wonder machine of the fMRI that they may invertently conclude that its findings are more
• 53:07
  robust and support of the light detection, when in fact, all they're measuring
• 53:12
  is the exact same phenomenon as the polygraph, just where it's taking place in
• 53:16
  the brain instead of inside your body. Because if your lungs are doing something.
• 53:21
  If your skin is conducting something, if your blood pressure is doing something,
• 53:24
  that's all that's being regulated by your brain anyway, right, And so
• 53:29
  if you're measuring it in your brain and on your body, you're getting the
• 53:31
  exact same measurement. You're just measuring it in two different places. And so
• 53:36
  that's again at best, assuming that you can correlate those things. So I
• 53:39
  think there's a real concern here that it lends credence to this idea of the
• 53:43
  polygraph when it really doesn't do anything different and is arguably much more dangerous because
• 53:47
  people assume that it does do something that it does not do. Absolutely.
• 53:52
  Now let's get into the research part of this, because this is some of
• 53:54
  my favorite stuff. Now. Twenty eighteen study in the Journal of Applied Research
• 53:59
  in Memory and Cognition summarize their paper by saying that quote, while some evidence
• 54:04
  supports the use of lie detection tests in specific context, the overall accuracy of
• 54:08
  these tests remains questionable end quote. And while that is only one study that
• 54:14
  talks about this idea that the results could be questionable, it's worth bringing a
• 54:19
  second study. So it's twenty nineteen study in Federal Practice found several medical conditions
• 54:23
  that can further hamper the use of polygraph of the polygraph test, and as
• 54:28
  such counter recommend the use of polygraph for interrogations. That's two studies that say
• 54:34
  it's probably not as good as you think it is, probably shouldn't do it.
• 54:37
  Yes, there was a twenty twenty white paper by Michelle Vittorio at the
• 54:42
  University of New Haven that seemed relatively keen on finding the silver lining of the
• 54:45
  polygraph. It really looked like they wanted to try and pull out what meaning
• 54:50
  they could and eventually reported that quote. According to the evidence and research reviewed,
• 54:54
  it appears appropriate to exclude currently available polygraph testing procedures from preemployment screening and
• 55:00
  background investigations in both private and government organizations, and to confirm the non admissibility
• 55:07
  of polygraph examinations in criminal courts end quote. Although it was written more elegantly
• 55:12
  than I said it, the sentiment there being like this is still something that
• 55:16
  should not be used. Yes. Then, following that, a twenty twenty
• 55:21
  one paper by Katzoglu Kutoglu Katsaglu, I think in the International Journal of Evidence
• 55:28
  and Proof. I love that that title for a journal, The International Journal
• 55:31
  of Evidence and proof. The articles called quote zombie forensics, the use of
• 55:37
  the polygraph and the integrity of the criminal justice system in the England and the
• 55:39
  Wales, and it further concluded that the polygraphs are not only contraindicated by the
• 55:45
  evidence, but that they are contradictory and quote detrimental to the integrity of the
• 55:51
  legal order. It's pretty damning, Yeah, they were. They were not
• 55:58
  soft about that. Nope. Some other things I don't recall for reported in
• 56:01
  the original one, because although there has been those recent studies since we originally
• 56:07
  published this article, there's not actually been a ton of updates on this.
• 56:09
  Most people kind of gave up on it twenty years ago. Men has sort
• 56:13
  of just stayed at that place. Although the American Polygraph Association, very confusingly
• 56:20
  calling itself the APA, has a tried to continue to push the narrative that
• 56:23
  polygraphs are useful. The Department of Defense has found that the polygraph to be
• 56:29
  only slightly better than chance, and so they don't tend to recommend using it.
• 56:32
  The National Academy of Sciences concluded that there is little evidence that the polygraph
• 56:37
  is anywhere near as accurate as the American Polygraph association claims that it is.
• 56:42
  So we've got sort of multiple organizations, even ones that would have a vested
• 56:45
  interest in using this tool, coming out saying we're not really sure this is
• 56:50
  worth really using. Yeah, it sounds like these folks are hanging out with
• 56:52
  the facilitated communication people. Ooh ooh. So what evidence suggests that the polygraph
• 57:00
  is accurate seems to rely on whether the polygraph was conclusive or inconclusive, not
• 57:05
  whether it was actually accurate in detecting deception. Articles in favor of polyographs are
• 57:09
  pretty much always, always, as far as we could find, conducted by
• 57:14
  polygraph advocates. Other evidence cited questioning actual criminals, although those experiments seemed to
• 57:20
  indicate that the person a ministering the polygraph already knew the truth. Others have
• 57:23
  used hypothetical scenarios where people are told to pretend that they are they committed a
• 57:30
  crime and then try to lie about it to the polygraph, which introduces the
• 57:34
  problems of one the tester knows the information already and two the people aren't actually
• 57:37
  lying nor did they actually commit a crime. So talk about measuring a nothing
• 57:43
  burger using unicorn farts? Essentially, what's happening here. Yeah, and you
• 57:45
  can't see me, but I'm doing a rainbow, a rainbow sign, a
• 57:51
  rainbow farts. We gesticulate on these videos, which you can find out more
• 57:53
  about if you join us on Patreon. Yes and true watch just for the
• 57:58
  gestures. That's really you come the content, You stay for the gestures.
• 58:00
  That's it. So I mean, really, if I had the thought as
• 58:04
  I was reading through this recent research here is that the polygraphs have a surprising
• 58:08
  amount in common with dowsing rods. Also a topic we should probably cover at
• 58:12
  some point, which is to say that they don't work in the way that
• 58:15
  they say that they work, and when they do work, it's kind of
• 58:17
  either due to luck or because your observer was so skilled that they did all
• 58:22
  over the actual work and the machine is just kind of pretense. And like
• 58:25
  I said, we'll have to cover dowsing rounds at some point. But I
• 58:29
  think what happens is you have some people who get really good at they start
• 58:32
  to pick up on subtle cues from people when they're being deceitful, and they
• 58:37
  get better at than chance at detecting when people are lying because they just get
• 58:42
  really good practice with it. And that the machine there is just kind of
• 58:45
  a gimmick, right that's sort of like, yeah, I'll use this thing
• 58:47
  so it looks like I'm doing something science as I'm actually reading this person's body
• 58:52
  language, and like people use like the k Men's facial recognition thing We've talked
• 58:55
  about a long time ago, when we talked about the five to one ratio.
• 58:59
  Anyway, they'll get really good at reading people sort of body language,
• 59:01
  and so then they use it. And the same thing is true with dowsing
• 59:04
  rods, is like they might be picking up on some sort of que in
• 59:06
  the environment that's completely unrelated to the fact that they're holding coat hangers in their
• 59:09
  hands right then, anyway, So that seems to be the sort of key
• 59:15
  ingredients to the success of this if and if it ever works, right,
• 59:19
  Like, first of all, it's inadmissible in many states in courts, and
• 59:22
  I think in federal court it's also considered inadvisible because they're they're so easy to
• 59:27
  fool and because they don't detect what they say that they're detecting. So anyway,
• 59:30
  I think that's that's sort of what I have to say about my conclusion
• 59:34
  of dowsing rods and yeah, thank you for joining us on this episode of
• 59:39
  Dowsing Rods. No, it's just one of those things that, like it
• 59:43
  just doesn't work and the fact that it persists is exhausting. It really is,
• 59:46
  like it's it's we need better stuff, you know. I think this
• 59:51
  is a tool we have sunk way too much time and effort into when we
• 59:53
  could be doing something that works better. I don't know exactly what it is,
• 59:55
  but I think just stop wasting time on this one. Find something better,
• 1:00:00
  right, and stop hurting people with it, and stop hurting people with
• 1:00:01
  it. Yeah, like it has been. It has been so much more
• 1:00:04
  a scourge than a benefit. Yes, anyway, let's go ahead and make
• 1:00:07
  sure that we do our recognition, our due diligence. Here. We are
• 1:00:10
  going to recommend some things for you and that's fun. And so first I
• 1:00:15
  want to tell you some people will need to thank. First. I like
• 1:00:17
  to thank my team. Justin Greenhouse does editing and production on these episodes,
• 1:00:22
  fact checking and research and writing by Shane Jess and myself. Financial support comes
• 1:00:28
  from you, our listeners, and by the fact that we get advertising done
• 1:00:31
  and you guys help that mean something to the advertisers. So thank you,
• 1:00:36
  But major support and kudos go to the people who have taken the extra leap.
• 1:00:38
  They've gone the extra mile and really helped us secure our mission, and
• 1:00:43
  that is Mike, m Meghan Leyla, Mike T, Justin, Kim,
• 1:00:46
  Joshua, The Daily BA, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia and Brian. Thank
• 1:00:51
  you all so much. You are the best and we so appreciate you and
• 1:00:53
  all that you do. Yes. Now, I also like to say,
• 1:00:57
  if you like to support us other ways, you can go over our to
• 1:00:59
  our merch door and pick up sweaters, beanies, hats, jackets, water
• 1:01:01
  bottle stickers, mugs and all kinds of other goodies. So head over there
• 1:01:05
  if you want some sweet swag you can give away as a gift. Maybe
• 1:01:08
  replace your polygraph machine with one of those things. Then just throw the polygraph
• 1:01:13
  machine into the dump, yes, or you know, responsibly recycle it in
• 1:01:15
  some way that you can. It's probably electronic. Yeah, you use it
• 1:01:19
  for parts? Yeah that thing. And then also I think you can leave
• 1:01:22
  us a rating and review, like and subscribe, tell a friend, go
• 1:01:24
  out and invent a new interview technique that's likely to detect deception, called the
• 1:01:30
  why we do what we do technique and those are all good ways you can
• 1:01:32
  support us. I like it. Anything I missed before we get to recommendation
• 1:01:35
  shine, Nope, I think that covers it. Recommendations I am recommending.
• 1:01:47
  So this is a special interest group. This is the Behavior and Social Issues
• 1:01:52
  Journal housed under the BFSR or Behaviorists for Social Responsibility just through the Applied Behavior
• 1:02:00
  Analysis Association International, And they do all kinds of active things. Great group
• 1:02:05
  of people. Go check them out, go join, be a sustaining member,
• 1:02:07
  help save the world. It's just it's a it's a cool group of
• 1:02:09
  people who are whose mission is to go out and help build sustainable practices and
• 1:02:15
  find ways to sort of disseminate that information and make it as cheap and affordable
• 1:02:20
  and easy for people to do. And I'm you know, I'm just happy
• 1:02:22
  to be a part of it. I'm glad that they're out there doing what
• 1:02:24
  they do. So consider to go checking them out. If you're interested in
• 1:02:27
  sustainability type issues. Yes, yes, yes, yes, so my recommend
• 1:02:31
  issues music. If you like music, I like music, and if you
• 1:02:35
  ever want to like, reach out to us and talk about music. I
• 1:02:37
  am more than happy to talk about music. Both of us enjoy music quite
• 1:02:42
  a bit, absolutely, And this is a band that I forgot existed for
• 1:02:44
  a while and then they came back on my radar. And this is a
• 1:02:45
  band called Old Man Gloom. Yeah, specifically recommend an album called Meditations and
• 1:02:50
  B. This is a essentially kind of like an extreme metal supergroup from like
• 1:02:55
  members of Cavid and Converge and ISIS and all of those and as it came
• 1:03:00
  out in like the late nineties early two thousands, they're all very heavy and
• 1:03:02
  kind of groundbreaking in the world of extreme music. So Meditations and B is
• 1:03:07
  great. The Christmas record is really good. You can't really go wrong with
• 1:03:09
  anything, but start with Meditations and B because that is a really great starting
• 1:03:14
  point for this band, Old Man Gloom. That's fun. Okay, I
• 1:03:16
  like that name. Great name for a band, right, it really so
• 1:03:20
  I really enjoy it. Yeah. I forgot to mention, say, I
• 1:03:22
  don't usually do this, but as I was talking about BFSR, I forgot
• 1:03:25
  to mention, if you're a student, they actually have like some grant seed
• 1:03:29
  money they're trying to like give away to people who are interested in doing sustainability
• 1:03:31
  research. So that might be something to check out. They're trying to support
• 1:03:36
  students doing some cool stuff, so that might be a check them out.
• 1:03:38
  Sorry, I mean I love to undercut your your recommendation there, but no,
• 1:03:42
  you're good. Please always do. But I think that is all that
• 1:03:45
  I have for now. Thank you all so much for listening to us today.
• 1:03:49
  Anything else you like to add before we go? Shane, not today?
• 1:03:51
  All right? Then this is Abraham and this is Shane. We're out.
• 1:03:53
  See up. You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
• 1:03:58
  You can learn more about this and their episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast dot
• 1:04:03
  com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day