surfsteve wrote:She was put on the spot. What did you expect her to do; come flat out and say lie detectors are unreliable? For the majority of people they work. But then the majority of people aren't pathological liars. Though when it comes to politicians that's probably not true!
Your assertion is completely false. Lie detectors do not work any better than flipping a coin. They only appear to work because many people are intimidated by them. Which is basically to say that most people are too uniformed (aka, stupid) to realize the truth about lie detectors. So, having a firm belief that the lie detector operator is not a charlatan, suspects fall for the bluff and confess because they BELIEVE there is no use in continuing the lie. Having produced a confession, conviction at this point is fairly easy since the suspect then produces a complete account of his or her illegal activities. Basically lie detector operators simply push the idea that the person is lying and convince the suspect that there is no use in lying and, viola, the stupid person falls for the bluff hook, line, and sinker. Of course, many false confessions have been produced in this manner since gullible people sometimes believe that they actually committed a crime when presented with what they believe to be scientific evidence produced by the polygraph indicating that they committed a crime. Later forensic and circumstantial evidence shows that they did not commit the crime. Such cases are kept secret for the most part since law enforcement does not want to debunk the myth of the lie detector. However, some such cases do leak since there are some people who really do care about the truth. Ultimately, lie detector results cannot be used in court because their results are SCIENTIFICALLY INVALID.