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Effective
editJohndoe2230 I don't know what you mean by "are 98% effective". Effectiveness is neither reliability nor validity, so I don't know what you mean. I cannot make heads or tails of it. How do you define effectiveness? How do you measure it? What are WP:RS for it? What you wrote is grammatically correct, but it does not have meaning. In plaintext: tell us where did you read that polygraph examinations are 98% effective. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:02, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
- Data and sources are so important! I also noticed that there are about 5 sources or so that were published within the last 5 years. There are great articles related to polygraphs and deception that are a little bit more updated. Everything else is from decades ago.. AmarillaAerre (talk) 14:32, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
An opinion stated as a fact
editThe article says: "Marston's machine indicated a strong positive correlation between systolic blood pressure and lying." This sounds like a fact, while it only describes Marston's claims. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Acdcx (talk • contribs) 12:36, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Question
editIn the lede it says "often incorrectly referred to as a lie detector test"; why is this term incorrect? I'm not necessarily against it, but it's not very clear why it's incorrect. xRozuRozu (t • c) 00:34, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
- There's a pretty good explanation at the end of that paragraph. (The machine is detecting physiologic responses that may or may not be associated with a lie.) Larry Hockett (Talk) 00:42, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
Effectiveness
editIn reference to the United States Supreme Court opinion in United States v. Scheffer, the article currently states that "The Supreme Court summarized their findings by stating that the use of polygraph was 'little better than could be obtained by the toss of a coin.'" This is incorrect: the quotation in the SCOTUS opinion is only used to illustrate the fact that there is no consensus that polygraph evidence is reliable, with some studies finding that "polygraph tests assess truthfulness significantly less accurately".
The full quotation, in context, from the SCOTUS opinion is as follows:
Some studies have concluded that polygraph tests overall are accurate and reliable. ... Others have found that polygraph tests assess truthfulness significantly less accurately–that scientific field studies suggest the accuracy rate of the “control question technique” polygraph is “little better than could be obtained by the toss of a coin,” that is, 50 percent.
I therefore recommend that the sentence stating that "The Supreme Court summarized their findings by stating that the use of polygraph was 'little better than could be obtained by the toss of a coin'" is deleted from the article. ~2026-21475-55 (talk) 09:34, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
- Adding more context may be better than removing context. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:14, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
- Concur with thoughts of adding more context over outright deletion. Armeym ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ (talk) 23:46, 28 April 2026 (UTC)