Lying Detectors

Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed a bill to outlaw the use of lie detectors by private companies for screening or testing employees. Earlier this month, a Senate committee considering a similar bill heard expert testimony that polygraph machines don’t work. “There is not a single scientific study which demonstrates any reasonable degree of accuracy for” lie detectors, David Raskin, a psychologist at the University of Utah, told the committee.

Anyone who saw “60 Minutes” on CBS Sunday night will know exactly what Raskin is talking about. In an amazing demonstration involving an elaborate sting operation, “60 Minutes” showed that lie detectors cannot separate liars from those who are telling the truth. Proponents of the machines are the phrenologists of our day.

Nonetheless, some 2 million polygraph tests are given yearly in the United States, most by private businesses, 80% of them for screening employees. The jewelry, banking and retailing industries use these tests, which, they say, help cut internal thefts.

It’s hard to see how a machine that demonstrably doesn’t work can help do anything. Besides being useless, lie detectors can unjustly harm individuals. At present, a job applicant who is denied work on the basis of having failed a lie-detector test has no recourse. Except in areas such as race, sex and age, private employers are free under the law to hire or not hire anyone they like.

The Senate should follow the House’s lead and pass the polygraph ban sponsored by Senators Edward M. Kennedy (D-Ma.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). The only problem with both the Senate bill and the House-passed version is that they don’t go far enough. The House bill would exempt governments, security services, companies dealing with controlled substances, public utilities, child care centers and nursing homes. The Senate bill would exempt only governments from the ban.

Why exempt anybody? If the machines don’t work, they don’t work. They don’t discriminate between the public and private sectors. The exemptions imply that Congress believes that lie detectors don’t work, but in important uses, they will allow them anyway. This is illogical and foolish. All employees and job applicants should be protected from these machines.