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MEDICAL EXAMINER Our 11th Anniversary issue!

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HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS

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olygraph tests are a staple of TV crime shows and police procedurals. Boiled down to its basic elements, a polygraph machine is a collection of health monitors taking readings on heart rate, blood pressure, respiration and electrodermal activity (aka: perspiration in the fingertips) and recording all the readings simultaneously. Hence the name polygraph. (Polygraph examiners as a rule don’t use the term “lie detector.”) Would it be a lie to say polygraphs are reliable? Well, it might be expected that using medical equipment to establish legal facts might be fraught with uncertainty, and in fact, a 2001 article in the Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice found that two-thirds of the scientists with credentials appropriate to the subject considered polygraphy to be pseudoscience. A University of Minnesota

professor of psychology and neuroscience called the prevailing scientific opinion among those “who have the requisite background” to be “overwhelmingly skeptical of the claims made by polygraph proponents.” Other scientific reviews have found polygraphs to have the ability to identify lies “at rates well above chance but well below perfection.” That is why judges and juries, not machines, are still relied upon to establish guilt or innocence in a court of law. The US Supreme Court noted in a 1998 ruling that “there is simply no consensus that polygraph evidence is reliable,” unlike clearly factual evidence such as ballistics, DNA found at a crime scene or fingerprints. Research has not established benchmark physical reactions to lying, whether they be physical (such

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as heart rate or blood pressure) or mental (such as by measuring brain activity). Reactions can differ from person to person, and there are techniques that are said to be effective in deceiving the examiner even when lying. Double-agent Aldrich Ames, for instance, passed at least two polygraph tests while spying on the US for the Soviet Union, and “Green River Killer” Gary Ridgway likewise passed a lie detector test. Conversely, innocent people have been known to fail polygraph tests when later DNA evidence proved their innocence absolutely. Would you consent to take a polygraph test to prove your innocence? It could be a great idea — or a flip of the coin. For more information on the history of the polygraph, see “Who is this”?” on page 4. +

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