Science & Society

Science and Society and how they get along.

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Location: Santa Barbara, California, United States

I'm a physicist and science consultant specialized in optics, lasers and optical engineering. This blog, StarkFX, looks at what applications physics is finding today. Or, if you are looking at my StarkEffects blog, it displays my views about and interest in the interface between society and science.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Orgasms and the Polygraph

Have you ever lied about an orgasm? Usually (of course, I wouldn't know about this) someone (she) pretends to have one when in fact it never happened. Well, I have heard from a generally reliable source that a polygraph operator would usually be able to accurately tell if you had an orgasm during a polygraph and then lied about it. That is the best you can hope for from a polygraph. It does not accurately test whether or not a subject is lying. It does often present a false positive. That makes this instrument perfect for destroying careers and useless for catching spies. It just so happens that it never has caught a spy or a terrorist. This poor performance record is exactly the reason our government wants to employ this instrument to test the loyalty of the nations scientists working for government labs:

From Bob Park's What's New: A 30 Apr 07 memo notified Los Alamos employees that random polygraph tests of 8,000 personnel in high-risk categories will be conducted by the DOE as part of a new counter-intelligence program.

Why am I not surprised?

troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com

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