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A cop once told me that 20% of the people who tell the truth fail,and that 20% of liars,pass. Any truth to that?



I'd be totally skeptical of how he came to those nice round numbers, but at least the cop has opened his eyes to how unreliable they are. Like palm reading and other junk, it's all about the person examining the read-out. He or she is the one that decorates that bit of butcher paper with their red circles and decides when you're lying.

The entire process is wide open to subjectivity. It's amazing, but the FBI will not fire their own employees for failing the almighty polygraph, but they will try to hang a murder rap on someone for it.

If you ever know someone that got screwed by one of these and your lawyer is clueless, the first thing you should do is have him call all the local universities in your town to find a professor willing to sign an expert witness affadavit (and possibly testify). Thankfully the scientific community is starting to get really pissy about these things still being used in their current capacity. (The couple hundred bucks they get for filing an expert witness declaration, which takes about an hour, doesn't hurt either.)
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