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The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings
- s73v3r_ 8y agoAnd here I thought having to do FizzBuzz for two different interviewers was onerous.
- mirceal 8y agoI hope this is a joke
- maxxxxx 8y agoI think that's pretty obvious.
- monocasa 8y agoI've had people get visibly angry with me that I'd dare suggest that they do fizzbuzz.
- maxxxxx 8y agoI think every time somebody starts with "And here I thought...." it's something humorous.
- paulie_a 8y agoBecause it is an incredibly stupid test.
- monocasa 8y agoThat senior devs with decades of experience fail. I've literally seen someone who supposedly wrote firmware for the space shuttle fail fizzbuzz.
- maxxxxx 8y agoYou sometimes have to be careful and look if people are overthinking the problem. I have been in interviews where I was desperately looking for an efficient solution for a problem and couldn't find one while the interviewer only wanted to get a simple for loop.
- monocasa 8y agoHaving sat in that interview he wasn't overthinking it. Despite writing firmware for decades he had never heard of the modulus operator, and when we explained it to him, he didn't see the point of it. Remember those people in college who contributed nothing to the group project, but still somehow squeked by with a C? Those people now have jobs, and some have impressive resumes, particularly from .gov contractors where less than mediocrity reigns unfettered.
- paulie_a 8y agoIf the candidate was verifiably a NASA engineer the person half assed it probably just didn't care. I'm surprised that person just didnt respond with a very intricate set of functions that resulted in a middle finger. That's honestly insulting to use that as a test for a senior. Clearly there was no vetting process prior to a coding evaluation and the hiring process needs a lot of work.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoThe part where I had to do it twice for two different people isn't.
- haloux 8y agoOnerous? If you think 6-20 lines of code is onerous, you really should reconsider your career choice. Polygraphs can produce errors that may be used as a wrongful justification for an employer to dismiss your application. ...on the other hand A fizz buzz application that produces errors _should_ be used as a justification for a potential employer to dismiss you entirely.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoIt was a joke. Except for the part where I had to do it twice.
- mikestew 8y agoBoy, they sure didn't open with a case I could be sympathetic with. Lied to the state police, lied when applying to a city PD, but this time, oh, this time he's telling the truth! My guess is, word gets around, and "inconsistencies" is just the excuse they need. I'm not saying it makes it right, because next it's going to mere coincidence that a black woman had "inconsistencies" when applying. But in this case, I might be willing to let it go.
- crooked-v 8y ago> He had first applied to the Connecticut State Police and was failed for deception about occasional marijuana use as a minor. He then tried again with a police department in New Britain, where a polygraph test showed him lying about his criminal and sexual history. > This time he had failed the New Haven polygraph for something cryptically called “inconsistencies.” “[But] I’m not hiding anything,” he said at the hearing. “I was being straight and honest and I’ve never been in trouble with the law. I’m not lying about anything.” His argument seems to be that all of the polygraph tests were consistently wrong and that he didn't do any of those things. This is consistent with later comments by other people in the article: > While undergoing a polygraph examination for a position at an FBI field office in New Haven in 2010, a black man was told that his recollection of using marijuana only a few times in high school was showing as deceptive, and that he should change his answer. Later, he wrote: “I was convinced that [the examiner] may have made an assumption, based on a stereotype about African Americans and drug use, and used that stereotype to profile me. I also realized that what [he] was asking of me would reflect negatively either way—if I didn’t change my answer I was being deceptive, and if I did change my answer I was lying on my application.”
- mikestew 8y agoYeah, I read it several times, and it still came out to me as addressing only the final application. But now that you point it out, it seems more likely to address all applications. Regardless, that's about as far as I got because my two personal experiences with polygraphs tells me they're about on the same level as dowsing rods. "Have you ever used marijuana?" "No", he said, higher than a kite having smoked a bowl an hour before the test. It was asked both times, passed both times.
- honkycat 8y agoIt was my understanding that polygraph tests were mostly useless and just a way to claim someone is lying through clever use of pseudoscience
- meowface 8y agoThey're not useless, but yes, they are a form of trickery. It's a psychological technique that tries to make people who are lying or hiding things more likely to be nervous and more likely to confess (or be led down a line of questioning which eventually reveals new information). The actual results from the machine are pretty much just a red herring, but that doesn't necessarily mean the machines have no valid uses. If use of a polygraph has helped tricked even one criminal into (truthfully) confessing or scared away even one person with malicious intent, then they're useful. I wouldn't want a polygraph to be used for evidence in court, but I would want them to be used if I were interviewing for FBI/CIA/NSA. (But I definitely wouldn't want them to be used for firefighter and parademic positions.) I know it's a bit paradoxical that they can be both useful and a sham, but I think that's how law enforcement views them, too. This article presents a lot of issues with how they're used, but I wouldn't expect them to be phased out for a very long time (unless someone makes a version that actually has more scientific validity).
- IshKebab 8y agoYou could say the same thing about homeopathy - they are an effective placebo. Do you support their use too?
- meowface 8y agoI don't support the use of homeopathy, but I don't think that's a great analogy. Polygraphs are used as an interrogation technique, where psychological tricks and deception on the part of law enforcement are "fair game" (we could enter a long discussion as to whether or not deception during interrogations/interviews should be permitted, but regardless, that's the status quo right now). Trickery and deception when it comes to medicine and personal health are never fair game. I think there's definitely a difference between police telling a suspect "we know you did it" (when they don't actually know) and a doctor telling a patient "take this and you'll feel better" (when the drug actually does nothing). Also, polygraphs are a little bit more functional than homeopathic medicine: a polygraph can not only induce nervousness, but can also notice it in some cases (even if the nervousness may not be concerned around a particular question and may not necessarily indicate deception and even if there are false positives). This helps create a feedback loop which makes it more powerful than a pure placebo (e.g. a "lie detector machine" you hook someone up to which isn't powered on at all and does literally nothing).
- pixl97 8y agohttps://antipolygraph.org/ https://antipolygraph.org/ The lie behind the lie detector.
- stickfigure 8y agoIgnore the cheesy web design, the PDF book is a fascinating read and goes into the detail of how polygraphs work. They're a bit more complicated than "oh your heart rate goes up", and yes they're complete BS.
- mindcrime 8y agoPolygraphs are pseudo-scientific nonsense with no actual validity. Why would anybody use that as part of a job screening?
- crooked-v 8y agoIt gives employers a way to "scientifically" justify their hiring practices against discrimination lawsuits.
- dvtrn 8y agoIANAL but what's to prevent the litigating party from immediately filing a Daubert motion against an employer who tries to say they used the polygraph to 'scientifically' disqualify a prospective job seeker-since you can't just hand a polygraph machine to any on-staff HR rep and go "No go see if Bob here really graduated from MIT like he says", and the wealth of research telling us how problematic results can be?
- crooked-v 8y ago> IANAL but what's to prevent the litigating party from immediately filing Not having the money to do so.
- dvtrn 8y agoHeh, okay that's a fair and valid counterpoint, but entertain the hypothetical-I'm genuinely curious how that could play out if someone took a prospective employer to court following a polygraph that disqualifies them from further interviews.
- mc32 8y agoProbably DQing yourself from future employment consideration. Prospective employers don’t prefer litigious candidates. (seemingly regardless of merit).
- pippy 8y agoI'm surprised a 1930's era pseudoscience is still hanging around professional law enforcement circles. The optimist in me hopes it's a clever ruse to screen people who simply aren't team fit. The pessimist tells me they're the caliber of people who also think calling in a psychic to help with murder cases. Modern fMRI technologies can tell if people are fabricating stories. There's actual science behind them.
- yayana 8y ago> Modern fMRI technologies can tell if people are fabricating stories. There's actual science behind them I think there was some actual science behind the polygraph too, but just having actual science on poorly informed/motivated participants isn't really enough for tech that will have long term adversaries. I can't recall if 1/3 or 2/3 of myth busters staff could beat the fMRI once prepared and motivated. Initial experiments on disinterested subjects given no information about past experiments may have legitimately been about the same for both fMRI and polygraph (at the respective times when participants could have had no information)..
- wongarsu 8y agoApparently in 3 tries Mythbusters managed to fool the fMRI lie test once. They didn't experiment much with different techniques, I would fully expect success rates to get much worse than that as people get more time to find good techniques for beating the test. https://mythresults.com/episode93 https://mythresults.com/episode93
- lostlogin 8y agoIt wouldn’t be hard to make the scan uninterpretable either, which is a seperate failure mode.
- headcanon 8y agoI was looking for a statement by the "other side", someone in government who could give a justification as to why they're being used. Is it simply because its the "standard" now, and bureaucrats don't want to stick their neck out by getting rid of it? Is the fact that it is a machine that has been around for awhile, regardless of efficacy, give people that much comfort? Or are enough people really that misinformed? Its a bit like marijuana legalization coverage - its rare to find arguments for maintaining the status quo as opposed to getting rid of it.
- AviationAtom 8y agoThere is no good reason. It just gives them the feels. Countless super innocent people get denied, while spies make it through.
- daveFNbuck 8y agoOne other side is that most applicants don't know that lie detectors are bunk, so their use can result in more honest answers.
- bilbo0s 8y agoLots of technology doesn't work, but we're still going to use it. Sometimes because it's better than nothing. Sometimes because no one gets fired for using <insert standard technology here>. And sometimes just because the politicians owe favors to their corporate handlers. Lie detectors, Sea Wolf submarines, facial recognition software, etc etc etc. Many security technologies lie on the spectrum from "impractical" to out and out "doesn't work". But we just have to get comfortable with them, because they aren't going away.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoThat's a rather defeatist attitude to take.
- Lazare 8y agoThe continued use of polygraph "tests", as if they have any validity whatsoever, is honestly a scandal.
- lostlogin 8y agoThey have been in the news recently in relation to the current Supreme Court fiasco. Why are they they a thing? Who likes them?
- Lazare 8y agoWell, they don't have any particular accuracy, but they do allow the operator to generate whatever result they like in a usefully opaque manner. The linked article discusses a large number of cases of racial bias. Obviously if you want to be biased in your hiring, but you want to hide it, a polygraph is very convenient way to manufacture some cover. (Alternatively of course, some of the police departments may have had no such intention, and merely been the victim of biased polygraph operators.) As for the recent Supreme Court fiasco, incidents 35 years in the past rarely turn up much hard evidence. A polygraph is, again, a very useful way to manufacture something that looks like evidence. (And that's true regardless of the truth of Ford's claims. Just because polygraph results are fake doesn't mean they aren't accurate sometimes!) In short: > Who likes them? The people who commission them, because they can get the results they want, and the people who operate them, because it's a pretty well paying job.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y agoRight. The big lie about it is that there's any possibility of the "test" proving a person's statements honest. That's what gets people to agree to them. In reality, once you step into that room, the best you can hope for is to come out without incriminating yourself, just like any other interrogation.
- wamsachel 8y agoI once was gassing up at a station, and for whatever reason the card reader on the pump wasn't charging, but would let me pump gas anyways. So me, and everyone else who'd used that pump that day, received a phone call from the police telling me to go pay for the gas. I figured it was just an honest mistake and didn't think anything of it. Fast forward a bit, to where I am undergoing a polygraph examination for the NSA. The exam made me uncomfortable and nervous, but I thought everything was going well. Except for when my interviewer came back and told me I was showing sensitivity towards the hiding crimes question. WTF? And when they do this, they're just giving you enough rope to see if you hang yourself with it. But I had no idea why (or even if) I was showing sensitivity to this question. They called me in for a 2nd polygraph, this time I didn't show sensitivity to hiding crimes, and I figured I was good to go. No. I get called into a 3rd exam (each exam was separated by a couple months, mind you). This time the interviewer told me "You did better at the hiding crimes question than I thought you would" W.T.F.?!?! The interviewer then left the room and came back with a manilla folder, from which he procures a piece paper which he reads that I had a suspected larceny charge back at home. I honestly had no idea what he was talking about until I remembered the gas station incident. But after I try telling him about it, he tells me that he doesn't believe me and that he thinks I stole that gas. This leaves me extremely flustered and the rest of the polygraph was a train wreck. 3 strikes and I'm out, my conditional employment with them was terminated. What irks me the most though, is that when I got back home I retrieved the larceny report from the court house, and in that document the whole story was laid out and my account of the situation was corroborated. So what the hell? Why throw me through such a ringer? Fuck the polygraph.
- Spooky23 8y agoIt’s a subjective interrogation with a prop. You tingled his spidey sense. And was he wrong? You pumped gas without paying. Did you acknowledge it as a criminal act or as good fortune or not at all? Look at it from the interrogators perspective.
- kevmo314 8y agoI think OP's point is that he didn't even remember the event, and the NSA was using the polygraph as a prop to try and get him to fess up to something he believed was trivial, so it was erased from his memory.
- arminiusreturns 8y agoGetting boxed is always about who gives the test, which also includes what and how questions are asked. That's why you would always prefer some old salty crusty bastard who can see through bullshit vs some young FNG who thinks he's saving the world one box at a time, which is where stories of fully qualified people getting dropped mostly come from.
- nimbius 8y agoTrue story: we hired a guy who failed his polygraph to work in the motor pool for a local municipality. the test was required because he would be working on police cars and fire trucks. six years later and hes still working for us, we get an order from that same municipality to overhaul the intercoolers on nearly two dozen cop cars. I called up the pool manager and asked about the polygraph, and his response was they use outside contractors to get around the fact they have no certified mechanics.
- jackpirate 8y agoObligatory link to http://antipolygraph.org http://antipolygraph.org, which provides detailed research on why the polygraph is ineffective, details on how to defeat the polygraph, manuals used to train polygraph investigators, and many other juicy tidbits.
- kbos87 8y agoAcross lie detectors, forensic testing, and every similar discipline there should be frequent blind auditing by a neutral third party, and the results should be made available to the public.
- nraynaud 8y agoI don't see how that would change things. The TSA got 97% failure rate in independent testing, did you see any change at the airport?
- rasz 8y agoMake mandatory annual operator tests, all failed ones get fired immediately. Throw in some safeguards against secret handshakes between operators.
- your-nanny 8y agoMight as well use divining rods.
- nraynaud 8y agoIn France in the 90's there was an obsession with analysing the handwriting of applicants, the same kind of bunk science. As far as I know it's gone now (I guess nobody applies with a hand-written letter).
- Covzire 8y agoI wonder what the correlation is between high neuroticism and failing a polygraph.