Sadly it's true. Many believe that lie detectors are flawless; however research shows that polygraphs are only accurate 70% of the time. Through social media and TV shows I thought I knew the basics to lie detection, but after reading more in depth about it, I now realize that I was wrong. I was surprised to find out that there is "little to no correlation between people's confidence in their ability to detect lies and their accuracy", or in other words confidence doesn't relate to correctness. An article in USA Today revealed that "Lie detectors are likely lying themselves." According to the article, It turns out that polygraphy is not only an incredibly inexact science, but that reading the results of a lie detector is almost entirely subjective. The problem isn't that the machines don't record something, but that what's recorded is entirely up to interpretation. In my opinion, I feel that the reasoning the article gives is incorrect, but that could be because the article is old. This article contradicts with previous statement about confidence and the ability to detect lies. For that reason, I believe that this article is a not a great source, but it does have some useful information.
This topic grasped my interest because I love watching mystery shows. One of my favorite shows is White Collar where Neal Caffrey is a "former" con artist who is serving a four year sentence for bond forgery under the supervision of agent Peter Burke of the FBI. In one episode, he falsely passes a polygraph by poking himself with a thumbtack before answering every question. This is just one of several tricks to passing a polygraph. In fact, there is a website especially designed to help people falsely pass polygraphs.
Overall, I think we can all safely say that polygraphs are not the best option, but then the question comes to mind; what can beat the lie detector? Maybe something like this might do the trick. This new idea would be using eye movement to detect lies. Instead of measuring a person's emotional reaction to lying, eye-tracking technology measures the person's cognitive reaction. Only time will tell, if this will truly work.
