It’s very popular on talk shows right now (e.g., The Maury Show, The Steve Wilkos Show, The Dr. Phil Show) to accuse someone of cheating or of being a pedophile or whatnot based on them failing a lie detector test.  But all those tests show is that someone had strong physiological reactions to a question.  I don’t see how they can logically move from identifying a physiological reaction, to telling with any scientific validity that someone is lying.  And they’re not admissable in court (for the most part, as far as I know).

Are lie detector tests a pseudo-science, and are these shows abusing it for sensationalism and ratings? 

Should the Center for Inquiry put out a position statement?

Well, CSI’s Skeptical Inquirer magazine has run several articles about concerns over polygraph machines. Unfortunately they aren’t all available for free on the web, but you can do a search for them HERE. E.g.: “Exploring Controversies in the Art and Science of Polygraph Testing” by John Ruscio
Volume 29.1, January / February 2005.

It’s widely rejected as pseudo science in the scientific community. (Iacono, W.G. “Forensic ‘lie detection’: Procedures without scientific basis,” Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice, Vol. 1 (2001), No. 1, pp. 75-86.)

Talk shows that use them should be forced to provide a disclaimer.  They are ruining people’s lives

This is an interesting article from UK skeptics: http://www.ukskeptics.com/cms/lie-detectors-the-truth-about-the-polygraph/

It also concludes it’s pseudoscience

You can listen to this 5 minute Skeptics Guide to the Universe (SGU) 5x5 podcast episode on polygraphs.

The takeaway:  The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) called polygraphs, “...completely invalid as a diagnostic instrument for determining truth…”  The NAS went on to call polygraph research, “...unreliable, unscientific and biased.”

This is a summary of the key article from ROCINANTE’s podcast

http://antipolygraph.org/nas/exec.pdf

I recall in the 60s the owner of a store I went to insisted the employees all take lie detector tests because he felt someone was stealing.  A very nice, but flakey young clerk was petrified and failed it.  That afternoon I stopped by and she told me she was going to be fired.  I drove home, grabbed the bottle of tranquilizers the vet had prescribed for my Samoyed who freaked out at Fourth of July fireworks.  I don’t recall if they were Valium or Equinil, but they were at the low end of the dosage.  I went back, gave her two, and told her to insist that they give her a retest, but take them about an hour before the test.  She passed with flying colors. 

I have little faith in the so called “lie detector” tests.

Occam

The population you would REALLY want to know whether they are lying or not, sociopaths, would be the least affected by ‘lie detectors’.

Are you trying to say that people who feel no emotion could slip by such an infallible technology, Asanta?  Such audacious claims!

One thing’s for sure.  Calling someone a pedophile on T.V. based on a lie detector test is a CASH COW, regardless of whose life it destroys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsPUd5OfLi0

Exploiting moral panics has long been a lucrative business.

I would guess that a normal heterosexual male who had no quirks would have quite different neurological responses to the questions, “are you a vegetarian? and “are you a pedophile?”  I’m sure that if that were sprung on a non-pedophile male, he couldn’t help but do a bit of an internal double take, and this difference could easily be used as a justification for an unethical examiner to say, “Yep, he responded to that but not to neutral questions so he must be a pedophile.”

Occam