Polygraphs are unreliable. Countries are aggregates to which beliefs can be attribute only by misleading anthropomorphization, however.
> they should be banned from all usage, for all types of crimes and government screening.
They should be. We're not actually there, though a majority of state and federal courts hold them as inadmissible per se, IIRC, largely due to their unreliability.
That's certainly a fine position to take but it doesn't change the results of the study: 40% of complainants admitted they lied. Unless you think people were lying about having lied, and also making up an explanation for why they lied, just because of polygraphs?
edit: I should note something else here. Kanin's study has an appendix where he reports a similar analysis on two university campuses. In this case polygraphs were not used and were thus not a factor. They also used the same definition of false (only the accuser can render an accusation false). The false reporting rate in both these cases was 50% - higher!
> That's certainly a fine position to take but it doesn't change the results of the study
One might reasonably expect that if I wanted to comment on the broader issue of the study rather than the issues of polygraphs, I would.have done so.
HN discussion threads aren't simple two-sided structured debates, and there are reasons to respond to comments besides rebuttal to the central thesis of the comment to which a response is offered.
Polygraphs are unreliable. Countries are aggregates to which beliefs can be attribute only by misleading anthropomorphization, however.
> they should be banned from all usage, for all types of crimes and government screening.
They should be. We're not actually there, though a majority of state and federal courts hold them as inadmissible per se, IIRC, largely due to their unreliability.