There was no shortage of absurdities during last week’s Senate hearing on Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. But the suggestion that the polygraph test she passed proved she was telling the truth may have been the silliest, Jacob Sullum says.
Even if polygraphs worked as advertised, they would be useless in resolving conflicts between the accounts of two people who both believe they are telling the truth, as seems to be the case with Ford and Kavanaugh. But the problem is deeper than that, Sullum writes, because the basic premise of polygraphs—that deception can be detected by looking at variations in someone’s blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, and galvanic skin response (a measure of perspiration)—has never been properly validated.
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