Polygraph customers: if your chosen examiner has only an antique 'analog' polygraph, RUN!

Polygraph customers: if your chosen examiner has only an antique 'analog' polygraph, RUN!

Buyer beware - INSIST on a computer polygraph - here's what you need to know:

--From the 1950s to the 1980s, polygraph examiners used the old-fashioned analog polygraph instruments, which were nothing but a roll of chart paper and 4 moving pens.

--Each test produced more than 20 feet of paper of 4 wiggly lines, approximately 120 small body-reaction changes to each be hand-measured by the examiner

--In the early 1990s, about 20 years ago, computerized polygraph instruments arrived. No ink or paper problems, self-scoring, and far more accurate!

--Our Federal government polygraph academy changed to computerized in the mid 90s;
all police and sheriff polygraph units use computerized polygraph instruments;
to use an old antique analog now is almost criminally negligent.

--Almost no real examiner nowadays uses an old antique analog, but there are a few part-timers that will use them instead of the proper equipment, hoping that the untrained public might not know the difference. Don't be fooled!

--The following are secrets that part-timers who can only afford the old antique analog polygraph instruments ($200 to buy one on eBay, since virtually all professionals of the past 20 years have dumped them and instead use $5000 computer polygraphs) DON'T want you to know:

1. On the antiques, the examiner has to assign this point system to every body response on a chart, 40 responses on every chart of a 3-chart exam, so 120 slow hand-scorings total: +1, +2, +3, or -1, -2, -3. This rigid scoring is why there are so many final scores of 'Inconclusive' (Inconclusive= maybe lie, maybe truth, can't decide, too bad for the customer) when using the antiques.

2. Computerized models score body responses far more exacting, assigning fractional & more-exacting points such as '0.8', '1.7' or '2.6' to each of those 120 body response reactions to questions; those fractional differences are very critical when added up using a final scoring system such as the '-7 to +7 System' used by both types.

3. Plus, when the computer does the scoring, there are no personal 'helps' such as being too easy or too hard, and also: nothing can be missed.

4. While old antique analog polygraph instruments make up less than 10% of the instruments in use today, they account for 50% of the complaints of 'false positives' (where a polygraph examiner says 'Fail' and the examinee is not lying).

The bottom line: if an examiner can not afford modern equipment, not wanting to invest in the equipment best for his/her clients, that is a sign that you should call the next examiner.

SOURCE: John Grogan, Polygraph Instructor, Los Angeles/Atlanta/Boise/New York, AmericanPolygraphAcademy.com