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>> A very dear friend of mine, Jim Newman, who was CEO of PACE a company dedicated to perfecting communication between people and used by many corporations to enhance communication between management and workers, during a visit to his home in Studio City asked if we would be interested in seeing if plant life reacted to basic threats or comfort and caring.

He hooked a big plant up to a polygraph machine and then he lit a match and threatened the leaf with the proximity of the heat. The needle went nuts. He then played music and the needle reacted lazily. He stroked the plant and the needle reacted somewhere between being threatened and listening to music.<<

This, my friend, is what Cleve Backster did back in the 1968. Cleve is the “father” of the modern polygraph and he pioneered research in this area, starting back in the late 40's.

Try
http://www.backster.net/
http://falundafa-newengland.org/MA/science/Backsters.htm
http://www.insight-books.com/books/0914918966wb.htm
http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/RealStoryCh6.html (“Cleve Backster was also famous, notorious in fact, and had been since about 1968 when he first claimed that plants have primary perceptions which can sense human thoughts and respond to them. . .it wasn't until the late 1980s that neurobiologists discovered and confirmed that plants do possess "primary perceptions" because they have ‘rudimentary neural nets.’. . .Backster was (and still is) one of America's most noted polygraph experts who had refined and improved lie-detecting methods. But at some point he began experimenting by hooking plants up to polygraphs. He lit matched and burnt their leaves, and the polygraphs reacted. At some point after that, he began noticing that when someone merely THOUGHT about lighting a match to burn the plant, the polygraph readout showed big spikes in it.”

I met and spoke with Cleve this past summer during a conference where I was Master of Ceremonies. He is a gentle man, a good man and he is astounded and saddened at the abuse of his polygraph tool. While speaking with Cleve, I related my own polygraph story. I begin:

I had to go to an “agency” for a polygraph in order to receive one of those ultra-hyper sensitive clearances, you know, they type where you need a clearance to know just the name of the clearance you are getting.

Anyway, I was wired up and this is what happened:

Q1—Do you intend to answer truthfully?
A1 – Yes (No deception indicated)

Q2 – Do you watch TV with the lights on? (a “control” question, answer already agreed beforehand—I was supposed to lie)
A2 – No

Q3 – Have you disclosed classified information to unauthorized people?
A3 – No (“Inconclusive” response—so they tell me)

Q4 – Are you concerned about something we have not discussed?
A4 – No (No deception indicated)

Q5 – Have you answered truthfully?
A5 – Yes (No deception indicated)

Now, the “inconclusive” opened a ball of heck and the interview became an interrogation. Nothing like being in a room made up of 4 walls of mirrors and cameras and being wired to a machine and having a number of people calling you a liar.

I asked the interrogators how do they get around the logical inconsistency between the results of questions 1, 4, and 5. I mean, if the machine was accurate then how can I show no intention to lie (Q1), had nothing to hide (Q4), and answered truthfully (Q5). They had no answer and focused like a laser on the “inconclusive. Over the next 5-months I had to endure investigations and sit for a couple more polygraphs. Same result on the same question. In that 5-month time period I did a little research on polygraphs and found out that Mormons and Catholics have the highest rate of false positive (I am Catholic), and that exceptionally honest guys like myself (meaning those type of people that cringe at the mere thought of spilling secrets), we are another group with a very high rate of false positives. And finally, overall, at best, at BEST, there is a 10% false positive rate. That means for every 1,000 tested, 100 will be falsely accused of deception.

I told “them” to pound sand when they presented me a list of 9-questions they were going to ask, and each question began, “In your life. . .” I knew then that they were fishing and they just couldn’t let it go.

Bottom line: I kept my clearances but my life was heck for a long time.

Oh, yes, there are counter-measures that anyone can use to beat the machine (wish I had known them). In fact, in its entire history, the polygraph has NEVER caught a spy. Never.