this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2025
85 points (97.8% liked)
Hacker News
3046 readers
362 users here now
Posts from the RSS Feed of HackerNews.
The feed sometimes contains ads and posts that have been removed by the mod team at HN.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean I don’t agree with him giving special treatment to his buddies, but why is the FBI wasting time on polygraphs, which are a totally debunked pseudoscience?
Says in the article they started using them in ‘94…in ‘98 the supreme court ruled that these ‘tests’ were inadmissible in court. Because even back then it was proven that it’s impossible to determine the truth via polygraph at a rate better than simply flipping a coin.
My only guess is they might ding you on the polygraph if they already learned something through less than legal means, but it’s preposterous to think anyone making it into the FBI would be unfamiliar with the uselessness of the test itself
On a technical level, they don't work at all. On a psychological level, they work quite well at getting people to say things they otherwise wouldn't for an interrogation.