On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:56:14 -0400, Kurt Ullman
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:

A lie detector test cannot prove you guilty, but it can sure help
prove you innocent.
All a lie detector tells is how nervous you are. Most of the time,
under the circumstances, that is same thing. But there are a high number
of false positives.

I guess some people do talk about them.

Some African tribe had a practice, to determine who was teling the
truth, of heating something, maybe it was a ceremonial piece of metal
to which magical properties were attributed, and having the accused or
maybe even witnesses to a crime (I forget) open their mouths and allow
the heated thing to be applied to their tongue for an instant. I do
believe it was thought to be a magical test of telling the truth, but
cynics about magic would say that anyone who was lying was afraid that
his tongue would be burnt and his mouth would dry, making that very
thing happen.

Those who were not lying were confident no harm would come and their
tongues were normally wet, and indeed a moment of being touched didn't
hurt them.

Further making it seem like magic. I'm sure a lot of them knew it
wasn't, but it was the system.


Refusing to take one just ups the ante.

Has absolutely no impact on the trial since, at least in the US, you
can't introduce refusal to take a lie detector at trial. Makes the cops
marginally more interested, but most of the more seasoned detectives
know that refusal means nothing in real life. They still like to raise
their eyebrows and pretend otherwise, but that is mostly to elicit other
guilt responses in the person.
BTW: At least when I was more active in the area in the 80s, most of
the polygraph operators said they would only take voice stress analysis
tests if it was them or their families. They thought it measured
truthfulness better.