When lie detectors lie
Did O.J. really do it?
Did Barry Bonds add all those muscles and slam all those home runs by merely drinking his Ovaltine?
Who's leveling and who's lying in the Duke lacrosse scandal?
And who actually did shoot JR?
For inquiring minds who want to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, right here and right now, have we got a hookup for you.
To a polygraph machine.
If it's going to work for the Greensboro City Council, surely it can work in all those other cases.
Per Councilman Tom Phillips' suggestion, he and all but one of his colleagues will submit to lie detector tests over the next two weeks. At issue: Who did or didn't leak a confidential consultant's report on its investigation of the Greensboro Police Department?
Only Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small has refused to take the test or sign an affidavit affirming that she is not the source of the leak. This may mean she's the guilty party. Or not.
It may mean she acted alone. Or not.
It also may mean the matter could be resolved in a couple of weeks. Or not.
That's because lie detectors don't always tell the truth.
Based on 80 studies over the last 26 years, polygraph tests have yielded an accuracy rate ranging from 80 percent to 98 percent, the American Polygraph Association says on its Web site.
Do council members really want to base their reputations and credibility on the quivering needles and wires of a potentially fallible piece of technology?
Consider the case of state Court of Appeals judge and Greensboro resident Rick Elmore.
While working as a hotel desk clerk in Raleigh in 1979, Elmore and another employee failed a polygraph test after a bank deposit bag had mysteriously disappeared.
The bag eventually was found during renovation of the hotel's lobby. It had slipped below a deposit slot behind a wall.
Elmore attributed the false results in his test to a case of nerves, a lack of sleep and too much coffee. The bogus verdict so affected him that he wrote an article on the subject for the N.C. Central University law review.
In 1983, the state Supreme Court cited that article in its ruling that polygraph results be made inadmissible in any civil or criminal trial. “You wonder how many people (were) being railroaded,'' Elmore told the News & Record's Mike Fuchs in a 2003 interview.
On the national level, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in 1998 that lie detectors are no substitutes for human juries. In 2002 the National Research Council concluded that polygraphs had dubious value as spy-catching devices.
Or leak detectors.
"This is another step toward bringing closure to this issue," Mike Barber, the lone attorney on the City Council, said of the tests. But Barber also conceded Thursday that “the test isn't foolproof, and I think we'd have to address that."
Barber added: “I'm not sure the test sets a good precedent, but there were two or three good-faith efforts to get whoever's culpable to step forward."
Even Phillips acknowledges that false results are possible.
“We do run a risk and it would be an embarrassment if it happened to me or anyone else," he said Friday.
What a polygraph test may reliably do is gauge how good some people are at lying. And some apparently are pretty darned good.
Soviet spy Aldrich Ames passed two CIA-administered polygraph tests, even as he was costing the lives of 10 U.S. agents in Russia.
That's why we won't unravel the simmering Duke lacrosse mystery before final exams by hooking folks up and simply asking, “Did you or didn't you?"
That's why Barry Bonds will keep slamming homers and critics will keep slamming Bonds.
And it's why the council members find themselves in the prickly position of hoping that modern technology really does — or doesn't — do what it's supposed to do.
Comments (13)
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I've seldom seen totally innocent people refuse a polygraph test. 'Nuff said.
Posted on April 30, 2006 5:27 PM
The butler did it.
Posted on April 30, 2006 8:17 PM
I don't think the actual validity of the polygraph tests mean much in this case. The fact that a single individual out of nine refuses to take one says volumes.
Posted on April 30, 2006 9:34 PM
The innocent don't run and hide. Guilty will run and lie. The public in this case will never know.
Posted on April 30, 2006 10:18 PM
Sure, polygraphs aren't very useful in determining who's telling the truth, but that doesn't mean the threat of a polygraph is useless.
I'd like to see the Council adopt a policy like the one suggested by the editorial cartoon today. Each member gets one polygraph challenge per session that he or she can use to test any statement made by anyone else. Phillips calls "polygraph" on Barber and Barber has to go to the back immediately and get tested. If found lying, Barber has to wear a scarlet L for the remainder of his term. Perhaps a stint in the public stocks added for egregious offences. The scheme would work wonders, not least in the U.S. Congress.
Posted on May 1, 2006 2:33 AM
The polygraph could be useful in helping some politicians clear their good names. For instance, right now it looks like Deena Hayes went from two years ago saying, like most people with functioning brains, that forced racial busing had no educational value at all. Now, two years later, out of the blue and very uncharacteristic for her, she's saying everyone needs "diversity" (except Dudley of course.) and even makes the motion for the now adopted notorius Map C.
What changed? Well, it looks like taxpayer money may be finding it's way to Deena's Significant Other who just happens to share an adress with her via various schoolboard awarded contracts. Looks like Deena delived the swing vote delivering kids sought after by the High Point boardmembers as part of the infamous High Point Kid Grab, and the rest, as they say, will be history.
Could it be a quid pro quo? Here's a simple place where Deena takes the lie detector, gets her name cleared, and High Point parents can rest assured they didn''t get their kids swapped for cash. Everybody wins.
Posted on May 1, 2006 9:30 AM
The Pajama Game is, the game we're in...
Posted on May 1, 2006 3:15 PM
Allen, I'm going to suggest to John Robinson that you change the name of your blog to "Fun With The Sphinx".
Posted on May 1, 2006 3:18 PM
Ajax:
You're right. The guilty don't run and hide. The problem is, a false result can hurt even the not guilty with a false result.
What happens, for instance, if that happens to a council member? Or a couple of council members?
What then?
What good purpose will have been served?
Posted on May 1, 2006 5:22 PM
An interesting tidbot from today's Washington Post story on polygraphs:
"In settings in which large numbers of employees are screened to determine whether they are spies, the polygraph produces results that are extremely problematic, according to a comprehensive 2002 review by a federal panel of distinguished scientists. The study found that if polygraphs were administered to a group of 10,000 people that included 10 spies, nearly 1,600 innocent people would fail the test -- and two of the spies would pass."
Which is to say I'm not sure I would have submitted to the test or not if I had been in the council's position.
I might have tried really hard to convince Tom Phillips that it's not such a great idea.
Posted on May 1, 2006 5:46 PM
Allen
Did the News and Record benefit to some degree from the leak of the GPD information? Don't you think it sold more papers?
Posted on May 1, 2006 10:13 PM
The newspaper certainly got the story. And individual stories sometimes can boost single-copy sales. But it doesn't happen a lot. A better sure bet on sellng extra papers, our cirulation guys tell us, is Carolina winning.
Posted on May 2, 2006 10:51 PM
I'm a concerned citizen and friend of Mrs. Dianne Bellamy-Small. For as I have known Dianne she has been dedicated to the people she love and the community, believing and doing
anything positive to enhance not only the community but an individual.She spends no time procrastinating, she gets the job done;We all know that a polygraph test is not 100% accurate, considering all she has been and is still going through her nerves should be quite disturbed, I would'nt take it either.Dianne's loyalty to the community and the city Council should not be determined by a test we know could be incriminating. Her track record on and off board proves her dedication.Her works, her presence, her voice has been a blessing to so many. She has done so much in such little time on the City Council Board. Maybe this is the real problem in a nutshell.
Posted on May 10, 2006 11:22 PM