Andart

Placebo polygraphs

Polygraphs: placebo or trial by ordeal? - a Practical Ethics post where I argue that it is ethical to train people to deceive polygraphs.

The short version: polygraphs are lousy deception detectors, and relying on them causes both false positives, allows all sorts of biases to influence decisions, promotes false confessions, and worst of all, relies on deliberate deceit about their power. They are essentially a placebo technology, so teaching people how to beat them - or just the fact that this is possible - improves the overall epistemic standards.