They don’t have to maintain anything. Admit it was a stupid practice and stop doing it. Maintaining appearances makes them look dumb AND stubborn AND unwilling to admit prior mistakes. Yeah, sign me up.

Interview process and courts are different though. If it is used as a vetting tool it would not be a big deal if it scores a false positive if it at the same time is able to identify at least some positives. If you have enough candidates certain accuracy may be worth it.

So Ouija boards, astrological sign analysis, and a random number generator should be on the table too right? After all, if it identifies at least some true positives...

Talking about the interview process...I know you are talking about suspect police interviews, but job interviews is another space where crackpot pseudo-science and shit propietary tech such as IA pre-screening have a prominent say as well, for the worse

What does “this works” mean? You’re assuming it means to detect lies. Perhaps that’s not the value it brings.

The reason they're doing it is because it's national security and espionage. It's objectively better to deny 1,000 solid applicants because of something on a polygraph doesn't look right than to allow in one foreign agent, at least that's the idea. So they add this filter, it will filter out some good people but maybe it'll filter out a bad one or two. That one or two makes it worth it in their eyes.

It has nothing to do with "maintaining the shroud of 'this works'" because it does work for the purpose they have. It doesn't need to be 100% accurate or admissible in court.