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US use of lie detector tests criticized
16:50 08 October 02
NewScientist.com news service
The US government's reliance on lie detector tests has been criticised by an influential panel of scientists. However, they believe it is possible that the tests do have some value in law courts.
The US is the only country to routinely use the tests on thousands of government employees. But lie detector or "polygraph tests" do little more than worry innocent workers who take them and divert resources from more reliable methods of investigating possible security problems, according to a report from the National Academy of Sciences. The panel, chaired by statistics professor Stephen Fienberg of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, was convened following the case of Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese-American physicist who was privy to classified data at Los Alamos National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Lee failed a lie detector test and was later convicted on one charge of spying. As a result, in 1999 the Department of Energy instituted regular routine testing of thousands of employees, in a bid to spot spies. The move was attacked by employees.