Polygraph
A polygraph, often incorrectly referred to as a lie detector, is a device that measures and records several clinical biomarkers, such as blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate, and skin conductivity, and it is used while a person answers a series of questions to purportedly detect lies. Polygraphic assessments rely on the discredited assumption that some physiological mechanisms or functional state, and their variations thereof, could reliably account for psychophysiological phenomena supposedly invoked by (the act of) lying, though polygraphy is largely considered pseudoscience by the scientific community.
The belief underpinning the use of the polygraph is that deceptive answers will produce physiological responses that can be differentiated from those associated with non-deceptive answers; however, there are no specific physiological reactions associated with lying, making it difficult to identify factors that separate those who are lying from those who are telling the truth. In some countries, polygraphs are used as an interrogation tool with criminal suspects or candidates for sensitive public or private sector employment. Some United States law enforcement and federal government agencies, as well as many police departments, use polygraph examinations to interrogate suspects and screen new employees. Within the US federal government, a polygraph examination is also referred to as a "psychophysiological detection of deception examination".
Assessments of polygraphy by scientific and government bodies generally suggest that polygraphs are highly inaccurate, may easily be defeated by countermeasures, and are an imperfect or invalid means of assessing truthfulness. A comprehensive 2003 review by the National Academy of Sciences of existing research concluded that there was "little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy", while the American Psychological Association has stated that "most psychologists agree that there is little evidence that polygraph tests can accurately detect lies." For this reason, the use of polygraphs to detect lies is considered a form of either pseudoscience or junk science.
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