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All testimonies police or not should be subject to lie detectors

by matt3210 3y ago

thfuran 3y ago
What lie detectors? Polygraphs are not effective.
- stephen_g 3y ago
  Well, they can be effective as a prop to psychologically manipulate the subject into thinking you know when they’re lying, to try and pull out a confession. But that mostly only works if the subject doesn’t know it’s pseudoscience and believes polygraphs actually work… From what the anti-polygraph people say, apparently it only takes about 30 minutes of training before most people can actually manipulate the polygraph in a controlled way.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Which means every cop will know how to get past them. I grew up in a family with a number of members in law enforcement and other parts of the justice system. Cops actively teach each other what to say/what to do in court and when they themselves are questioned. The county I had lived in at that time was the worst. The guy in the sheriff's office that administered the lie detectors was "criminal scum" himself. For the longest time there were allegations of criminal behavior, but he finally pissed someone off and they hired a PI to follow him around. Caught this 40+ year old member of law enforcement giving minors alcohol at a party and hitting on them. It broke on the news and he was fired from his law enforcement position, but no criminal charges where ever brought... What was even better, he was quietly brought back on as a consultant to administer lie detector tests!
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Interesting that you should bring up some pseudoscience. It is well-known that jury trials often employ myriad methods of pseudoscience to admit artifacts into evidence, and to admit "expert witness" testimony into the record. Police, prosecutors and judges are incentivized and desperate to get a great record of convictions, and so they're positively motivated to do that by any means necessary. If you watch copaganda shows like NCIS or CSI, or the lovely Canadian Murdoch Mysteries, you will be introduced to a lot of smart scientists who use a lot of smart science to catch bad guys. Well, guess what, a lot of the "science" actually used in court, and believed by everyone on all sides of the case, and the spectators as well -- that "science" is fake, it's quackery, it's just an excuse to get convictions. Now there are whole categories of testimony and evidence which are always excluded and stricken from the record, because they are known to be invalid, such as "hearsay", and I think that if courts and the justice system compiled lists of pseudoscience and quackery, and then excluded that sort of crap out of hand, we would approach fairer trials and better justice for all.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  I am shocked, shocked! to find malfeasance in the FBI crime labs. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-is-a-lie/390897/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-is-... (So not just the pseudoscience and quackery but also the manipulation of replicated science)
jakelazaroff 3y ago
Counterpoint: lie detector tests should not be admissible as evidence at all.
LorenPechtel 3y ago
Lie detectors aren't remotely reliable enough to be used like this. Sufficiently skilled people can beat them and people tend to react to the sensitive questions (is the machine going to falsely say I'm lying???) even when telling the truth. However, I do believe they have a role in law enforcement. The same hardware can be repurposed for a guilty knowledge test. The police keep secret the details of the crime. If they catch a suspect they hook them up to a lie detector and make them repeat the details--some true, some false and compare the reactions. (I do not consider this compelled testimony as they're just reading a script.) Someone who shows a sufficient pattern of hitting on the true ones knows the details. It won't false positive because the innocent doesn't know which answers are the guilty ones (to be safe the person doing it should likewise not know so you don't get a Clever Hans effect) and won't tense up because if it. It could statistically but if you have enough questions you can make this possibility vanishingly small. There still is a chance of a false negative if the guy can beat it (unlikely) or actually didn't note the details you're asking about.

All testimonies police or not should be subject to lie detectors

thfuran 3y ago

What lie detectors? Polygraphs are not effective.

stephen_g 3y ago
Well, they can be effective as a prop to psychologically manipulate the subject into thinking you know when they’re lying, to try and pull out a confession. But that mostly only works if the subject doesn’t know it’s pseudoscience and believes polygraphs actually work… From what the anti-polygraph people say, apparently it only takes about 30 minutes of training before most people can actually manipulate the polygraph in a controlled way.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Which means every cop will know how to get past them. I grew up in a family with a number of members in law enforcement and other parts of the justice system. Cops actively teach each other what to say/what to do in court and when they themselves are questioned. The county I had lived in at that time was the worst. The guy in the sheriff's office that administered the lie detectors was "criminal scum" himself. For the longest time there were allegations of criminal behavior, but he finally pissed someone off and they hired a PI to follow him around. Caught this 40+ year old member of law enforcement giving minors alcohol at a party and hitting on them. It broke on the news and he was fired from his law enforcement position, but no criminal charges where ever brought... What was even better, he was quietly brought back on as a consultant to administer lie detector tests!

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

Interesting that you should bring up some pseudoscience. It is well-known that jury trials often employ myriad methods of pseudoscience to admit artifacts into evidence, and to admit "expert witness" testimony into the record. Police, prosecutors and judges are incentivized and desperate to get a great record of convictions, and so they're positively motivated to do that by any means necessary. If you watch copaganda shows like NCIS or CSI, or the lovely Canadian Murdoch Mysteries, you will be introduced to a lot of smart scientists who use a lot of smart science to catch bad guys. Well, guess what, a lot of the "science" actually used in court, and believed by everyone on all sides of the case, and the spectators as well -- that "science" is fake, it's quackery, it's just an excuse to get convictions. Now there are whole categories of testimony and evidence which are always excluded and stricken from the record, because they are known to be invalid, such as "hearsay", and I think that if courts and the justice system compiled lists of pseudoscience and quackery, and then excluded that sort of crap out of hand, we would approach fairer trials and better justice for all.

readthenotes1 3y ago
I am shocked, shocked! to find malfeasance in the FBI crime labs. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-is-a-lie/390897/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-is-... (So not just the pseudoscience and quackery but also the manipulation of replicated science)

jakelazaroff 3y ago

Counterpoint: lie detector tests should not be admissible as evidence at all.

LorenPechtel 3y ago

Lie detectors aren't remotely reliable enough to be used like this. Sufficiently skilled people can beat them and people tend to react to the sensitive questions (is the machine going to falsely say I'm lying???) even when telling the truth. However, I do believe they have a role in law enforcement. The same hardware can be repurposed for a guilty knowledge test. The police keep secret the details of the crime. If they catch a suspect they hook them up to a lie detector and make them repeat the details--some true, some false and compare the reactions. (I do not consider this compelled testimony as they're just reading a script.) Someone who shows a sufficient pattern of hitting on the true ones knows the details. It won't false positive because the innocent doesn't know which answers are the guilty ones (to be safe the person doing it should likewise not know so you don't get a Clever Hans effect) and won't tense up because if it. It could statistically but if you have enough questions you can make this possibility vanishingly small. There still is a chance of a false negative if the guy can beat it (unlikely) or actually didn't note the details you're asking about.