There's a wonderful scene in The Wire where they give a young thug a "polygraph test" by interviewing him in front of a copy machine and hit the copy button when he answers a question so that it spits out the message they preloaded into the machine "false." The thug looks crestfallen and tells them the truth.

For reference this is the scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ5aIvjNgao

Yes, exactly. Polygraphs are just a form of interrogation technique, disguised as "science". If the science was debunked, then the credibility of the machines would be questioned and the interrogation process would not yield as positive (if you can call it that) results. So the whole mystique of polygraphs must be guarded to keep up the facade of the lie detector's true capabilities.

I mean they have been debunked and anyone that Google's it knows it.

Doesn't mean they don't work as an intimidation tactic. Though most of the agencies that use them are probably filtering out a lot of good employees by putting them through a test designed to mess with them. Instead of focusing on whether the person has the skills needed for the job.

It's got to be pretty intimidating. Getting locked up in a room with the investigator, being told that you're not actually required to be there, but it will seriously jeopardize your chances of employment if you decide to leave or decline, etc. I'm sure it works well as an intimidation tactic, as you say.

People need jobs and are willing to put up with lots. Going through with a polygraph is likely just one of a number of the things that people in these industries have to put up with.

It is extremely intimidating. My interviewer decided that he was going to tear me apart and that he knew I was lying about something (I wasn't). He said he could only help me out if I admitted I was hiding something and told him why. I stuck to my guns, told him that I wasn't hiding anything, that I was sorry that it seemed like I was, and that I would be able to sleep soundly knowing I had been honest on my test, even if it appeared otherwise. He didn't like that a whole lot, but I told him I'd rather fail the process having told the truth than pass it having lied on it. Ended up leaving that job shortly after largely because I didn't want to do the polygraph. Fuck that noise.

I'd imagine it's also a good way to filter out non-sociopaths from the three letter agencies.

For the NSA/CIA, I imagine there is still doubt, even if you've looked it up. "Does the NSA know something everyone else doesn't [about lie detecting]?" is not an easy question to answer.

Even the name "lie detector" is a misnomer, polygraphs have absolutely nothing to do with "detecting lies". They just detect physiological changes during a line of questioning.

It's a good example of black magic.

In my experience, that's not how the session goes. All the questions are reviewed in advance with the interviewee; there are no surprise questions. The interviewer I worked with even mentioned which questions he wanted and expected lies to. Many of these were somewhat personal questions ("Do you live at X; Is your mother's name Y?"), but nothing overly invasive.

Granted, I did not participate in any polygraph sessions used for the purposes of information gathering; more to confirm information already in the open.

I had the "intimidation" kind of polygraph session when I was questioned by a couple of police detectives about a theft in a building where I was a security guard. Intimidation and threats. Like if you don't answer right we're headed to your place to search everything. They did not review the questions in advance; they did try to surprise me; there was no attempt at calibration. The lie detector seemed to be a prop. After the test one of them came to me and said "you passed" while looking at me closely like my reaction was just the last test. I laughed. I guess it was the right answer.

> when I was tested by a couple of police detectives about a theft in a building where I was a security guard.

Why did you agree to take the polygraph?

> Like if you don't answer right we're headed to your place to search everything.

If in the US they can't do that (w/o a court order which they would not get solely based on the way you are describing the situation).

> I guess it was the right answer.

The right answer would have been to not take the polygraph test at all and not to talk to them.

> Why did you agree to take the polygraph?

I wanted to keep my job. I didn't want the cops to find my weed (campus housing) and maybe get kicked out of college. Nobody had threatened to fire me and I may well have made the wrong decision. But I was very easy to replace and the condominium was full of paranoid rich people with lots of time on their hands.