Polygraph Testing Too Flawed for Security Screening

WASHINGTON - The federal government should not rely on polygraph examinations for screening prospective or current employees to identify spies or other national-security risks because the test results are too inaccurate when used this way, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council.

Much of the evidence assessing the validity of polygraphs, also called "lie detectors," is based on their use in the investigation of specific, known events such as crimes. In these cases, lie-detector tests can differentiate lying from telling the truth at rates well above chance, but they are far from perfect. The report concludes that the polygraph's accuracy is not good enough for security screening for two reasons. First, accuracy is almost certainly lower when the tests are used this way rather than in the investigation of specific incidents. Second, the large groups of people being checked include only a tiny percentage of individuals who are guilty of the targeted offenses; tests that are sensitive enough to spot most violators will also mistakenly mark large numbers of innocent test takers as guilty. Tests that produce few of these types of errors, such as those currently used by several federal agencies, will not catch most major security violators - and still will incorrectly flag truthful people as deceptive.

"National security is too important to be left to such a blunt instrument," said Stephen E. Fienberg, chair of the committee that wrote the report, and professor of statistics and computer science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. "The polygraph's serious limitations in employee security screening underscore the need to look more broadly for effective, alternative methods."

Concerned about potential security violations at national energy laboratories, the U.S. Department of Energy asked the Research Council to conduct a study of the scientific validity and reliability of using polygraph testing to identify personnel who may jeopardize national security. Employees who work in sensitive positions at DOE labs and similar federal sites are subject to testing by law. When used this way, however, the drawbacks of current polygraph exams are abundantly clear, the report says.

The exams include a pre-test interview between the examiner and test taker, followed by interrogation coupled with the use of a device that records an individual's physiological responses, such as respiration rate and changes in blood flow, to a series of questions. Examiners later analyze the record of these responses to help make inferences about whether someone is being honest.

Polygraph testing now rests on weak scientific underpinnings despite nearly a century of study, the committee said. And much of the available evidence for judging its validity lacks scientific rigor.

Moreover, because the largest part of the evidence comes from studies that assess lie detection related to specific events, it has limited relevance to pre- and post-employment screening, the report says. Examiners ask generic questions during security screening because they do not know what violations test takers may be concealing. Individuals may react differently to generic questions than to specific ones typically used in investigations of known events. Additionally, both examiners and test takers may have difficulty knowing whether answers to generic questions are truthful unless there are clear and consistent standards that define what type of response is justified.

Using these tests in pre-employment screening is even more complicated because examiners make inferences about individuals' future behavior based on information about previous deeds, which may differ widely from the offenses authorities hope to prevent. The committee concluded that polygraph testing is less accurate for employee screening than for investigating specific incidents.

On a more basic level, theories about how deception is linked to the physiological responses being measured have not been verified, the report says. A variety of mental and physical factors, such as anxiety about being tested, can affect polygraph results - making the technique susceptible to error. Also, people can learn ways to mimic some physiological responses of truthful test takers. This is a particular concern when dealing with deceptive individuals who have strong incentives and sufficient resources to perfect certain "countermeasures" or ploys to appear honest and avoid detection. Available research sheds little light on how well examiners can systematically expose such people.

Despite its weak science base, polygraph testing is commonly believed to be a highly valid procedure for detecting lies. Popular culture and the mass media often portray lie detectors as magical mind-reading machines. The mystique surrounding the exams - instead of a solid scientific foundation - may account for much of their usefulness to authorities, the committee noted. Examiners' field reports and indirect scientific evidence indicate that testing programs may deter potential security violators or elicit confessions from some offenders who, unaware of the tests' weaknesses, believe that a lie detector would surely catch them.

The federal government relies heavily on polygraph testing to identify people who have committed or might commit espionage and sabotage. However, overconfidence in this method may endanger national security objectives by creating a false sense of security among lawmakers, federal employees in sensitive jobs, and the general public, the report warns. As a result, other ways to ensure safety could be neglected, creating situations that might increase the risk of security lapses. Resources could be wasted by devoting too much attention to employee screening and too little to other security measures. Plus, retention of highly skilled and valuable government workers could suffer because employees might fear the consequences of being falsely identified as dishonest.

Some potential alternatives to polygraphs show promise, but none has led to scientific breakthroughs in lie detection, the report says. Moreover, the federal government has not seriously developed the science base of any method to detect deception through the analysis of individuals' psychological and physiological reactions.

The committee called for a broad research program that would provide federal agencies with the most scientifically sound methods for deterring and detecting major security risks, and work to make government authorities fully aware of the strengths and drawbacks of their security techniques. This effort would support a variety of activities - from basic research on psychological, physiological, social, and political processes related to discouraging and uncovering security threats, to studies on ways to carry out well-founded screening techniques in everyday practice. No single research approach is clearly superior.

An impartial organization that is not responsible for any aspect of detecting deception should run a considerable part of the program, the report says. Additionally, the program should follow established standards for scientific research and, without jeopardizing national security, operate under normal rules of scientific freedom and openness to the fullest possible extent.

The study was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. The Research Council is the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit institution that provides science advice under a congressional charter. A committee roster follows.

Read the full text of The Polygraph and Lie Detection for free on the Web, as well as more than 1,800 other publications from the National Academies. Printed Copies are available for purchase from the National Academy Press Web site or by calling (202) 334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242. Reporters may obtain a copy from the Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed above).

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education
Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences
and
Committee on National Statistics

Stephen E. Fienberg¹ (chair)
Professor of Statistics and Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh

James J. Blascovich
Professor and Chair
Department of Psychology, and
Co-Director
Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior
University of California
Santa Barbara

Richard J. Davidson
Director
Laboratory of Affective Neuroscience, and
Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry
Department of Psychology
University of Wisconsin
Madison

Paul Ekman
Director
Department of Psychology and Human Interaction Laboratory
University of California
San Francisco

David L. Faigman
Professor
Hastings College of Law
University of California
San Francisco

Patricia L. Grambsch
Associate Professor
Department of Biostatistics
School of Public Health
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis

Peter B. Imrey
Professor
Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
The Cleveland Clinic Foundation
Cleveland

Kathryn B. Laskey
Associate Professor
Department of Systems Engineering and
Operations Research
George Mason University
Fairfax, Va.

Kevin R. Murphy
Professor
Department of Psychology
Pennsylvania State University
University Park

Marcus E. Raichle ^1,2
Professor and Co-Director
Division of Radiological Sciences
Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology
School of Medicine
Washington University
St. Louis

Richard M. Shiffrin¹
Luther Dana Waterman Research Professor
Department of Psychology, and
Director
Cognitive Science Program
Indiana University
Bloomington

Scientists have been warning for years that polygraph screening is completely invalid and should be stopped. Among them are the FBI's former top scientific expert on polygraphs, Dr. Drew C. Richardson, and Dr. Sheila D. Reed, the Department of Defense researcher who devised the polygraph technique used by the DoD.

For more information on polygraphs, and to learn how anyone can easily pass (or beat) one of these pseudoscientific tests, visit AntiPolygraph.org.

From the Conclusions and Recommendations of the Report:

Theoretical Basis - The theoretical rationale for the polygraph is quite weak, especially in terms of differential fear, arousal, or other emotional states that are trigered in response to relevant or comparison questions. We have not found any serious effort at construct validation of polygraphy testing

Reasearch Progress - Research on the polygraph has not progressed over time in teh manner of a typical scientific field. It has not accumulated knowledge or strengthened its scientific underpinnings in any significan manner. Polygraphy research has proceeded in isolation from related fields of basic science and has benefited from little conceptual, theoretical and technological advances in those fields that are relevant to the psychophysiological detection of deception.

Preemployment Screening The relevance of available research to preemployment polygraph screening is highly qeustionable because such screening involves inferences about future behavior on the basis of polygraph evidence about past behaviors that are probably quite different in kind.

DOE Polygraph screening policy ... We hvae carefully examined the situation of employee security screening at the DOE laboratories, and teh conclusions below apply to that situation. They are likely alos to apply to other situations in which the base rates of the target transgressions are extremely low, the costs of false negative results can be very high, and the costs associated with using a screening procedure that produces a large number of false positive results would be extreely high.

Limitations for Detection The polygraph has currently used has extermely serious limitations for use in scecurity screening to identify secuirty risks and to clear valued employees. In populations with extremely low base rates of major security violations, such an application requires greater accuracy than polygraph testing achieves.... The potential costs of such use [include] the possibilities that it will lower morale and productivity in national security organizations and deter people with scarce and highly valuable skills from working or continuing to work in these organizations.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.