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"it can be argued that polygraphs may have their place in a limited amount of employment situations as long as the lying/truthful results are thrown out as the
by staticautomatic 7y ago
"it can be argued that polygraphs may have their place in a limited amount of employment situations as long as the lying/truthful results are thrown out as the test may work as a "placebo" for the interviewee to admit to serious skeletons in their closet."
If the test cannot distinguish between true and false, then any purported "skeleton" is as likely to be false as it is to be true.
- 0xcde4c3db 7y agoThe idea isn't that the machine is actually detecting anything here, it's that the general atmosphere of the "test" and a sufficiently convincing performance of "the machine says you're not being truthful" will get people to volunteer information that they would otherwise have kept to themselves. It's a variation on an old technique where an interrogator will claim to have incriminating evidence or eyewitness testimony that they actually don't.
- thrwaway69 7y agoNow I wait for someone to complain about companies abusing their hires through this in another hn thread for hiring practices.