Lie Detector Tests: 50% Accuracy?

HS - Jason Hartman Income Property InvestingThe lie detector is not a test for truth and the polygraphists know this. Join Jason Hartman as he interviews expert and co-founder of AntiPolygraph.org, George Maschke on the fallacy of lie detectors. George states that the practice of using a polygraph test has not been scientifically proven to be accurate and that, for the most part, it gets people to divulge information based on “control” questions, and also “buffer” questions that are not even measured. The polygraph measures physiological responses, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart and perspiration rates, which are compared to the reactions of lie-control questions. George explains how it is often used to trick people into handing over information, how the test is not 98% accurate, but closer to only 50% accurate, and how it is sometimes used as a plea bargain in court cases to “prove” innocence or guilt. For more details, please listen at: www.HolisticSurvival.com. George shares many instances where the guilty were able to manipulate the test and go free unless other evidence was found to convict, and also instances of innocent people being found guilty. He lists many ways that a lie detector test can be beaten.

George Maschke became a co-founder of AntiPolygraph.org and an author and activist against the use of lie detectors after wrongly failing a polygraph to get into the FBI. The organization is a non-profit, public interest website dedicated to exposing and ending waste, fraud, and abuse associated with the use of polygraphs and other purported “lie detectors.” George is co-author of “The Lie Behind the Lie Detector” with Gino J. Scalabrini. George was born and raised in Long Island, New York, where he graduated from Westhampton Beach High School. He joined the U.S. Army for a four-year enlistment, and then moved to Los Angeles, California to study at UCLA, where he received his bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Studies, followed by a master’s and doctoral degree in New Eastern Languages and Cultures. He currently lives in The Hague, Netherlands, with his family as a legal translator. Please see more of our podcasts featuring special guests, such as Trends Research Institute’s George Celente, survivalist Cody Lundin, author G. Edward Griffin, author John Perkins, and many more.

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Start of Interview with George Maschke

Jason Hartman: My pleasure to welcome George Maschke to the show. He is an expert on the subject of polygraphs, otherwise known as lie detectors. He is with AntiPolygraph.org and I think you’re gonna be pretty amazed at some of the stuff you learn here today. There’s a lot around this subject. It’s rarely discussed, rarely talked about until it might affect someone listening personally, whether it be for a job interview, any kind of background check, maybe a criminal investigation. We’re talking to people all over the world, so we’re not just talking about US law here, and something important to know and just downright interesting, frankly. George, welcome, how are you?

George Maschke: Very well, thanks. Good to speak with you, Jason.

Jason Hartman: Well, likewise. Now, where are you located that we’re talking to you from today?

George Maschke: I’m in The Hague, The Netherlands where I’ve been working for the past decade.

Jason Hartman: So, The Hague, that’s the famous place where all these war crime trials go on, right?

George Maschke: That’s correct. It’s the seat of the international criminal court, as well as a special court for the former Yugoslavia.

Jason Hartman: Fantastic. And were you involved with The Hague in some way that the polygraph issue’s going? Tell us about your background if you would.

George Maschke: Well, I’m a former army intelligence officer and interrogator and a Middle Eastern language linguist. I have working proficiency in Arabic and Persian. And so I’m here in The Hague working as a legal translator.

Jason Hartman: I would assume that your skills are very in demand right now with the “war on terror”, right?

George Maschke: Well, yes. Yes, indeed they are. But I’m not participating in the war on terror because of the polygraph.

Jason Hartman: Well, tell us about the polygraph and why it shouldn’t be trusted. You have a digital book out entitled The Lie Behind the Lie Detector and it’s in its 4th edition.

George Maschke: That’s right. The main reason that the polygraph should not be trusted is that it simply doesn’t work. There’s a widespread perception, especially among Americans, that the lie detector is admittedly imperfect yet a pretty good indicator whether a person has spoken the truth or not. But that is a myth, a myth that is perpetuated by polygraph operators themselves, by state and local government agencies, and by an uncritical press as well as Hollywood movies and popular culture. The lie detector was developed not by scientists but by interrogators as an adjunct to interrogation. And that’s something everyone needs to know is the lie detector is not a test for truth. It’s a way of getting people to talk, of getting people to maybe divulge more information than they might if the polygraph wasn’t being used.

Jason Hartman: So, let’s just talk about that for a moment and let’s talk from the basis, if we can, just to kind of get into this of those who believe in the lie detector. I remember, George, when I was a kid, I got a little lie detector from Radio Shack. It had two things that you put on your fingers, one on each finger, and it detected what’s called your galvanic skin resistance, right? And I know that real lie detectors do more than that – they do breathing and heart rate and all kinds of stuff I suppose, but that’s one aspect of it. I mean, there’s some science behind it, right? Your galvanic skin resistance and your heart rate and your perspiration levels do change – your eye movements change, don’t they? Or not at all.

George Maschke: Sure. Eye movements are not measured by the polygraph instrument. However, yes, the polygraph instruments do measure changes in skin conductivity or resistance depending on the model, blood pressure and heart rate, as well as breathing. However, these indices are not correlated in any systematic way with deception in humans. So, it’s not adequate to measure well that which should not be measured at all.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, okay, interesting. I guess maybe the ultimate lie detector, if one ever does work, would be the FMRI, the functional magnetic resonance imaging device that is just starting to be used. Will there ever be a reliable lie detector? Is that one of them? The FMRI? Because that seems like almost a mind reading device, frankly.

George Maschke: Well, I don’t know. It seems to me that, with regard to FMRI, the marketing is way ahead of the science.

Jason Hartman: Which is so typical in today’s culture, isn’t it?

George Maschke: Indeed. So, I think that if a working lie detector is ever to be developed, it would probably lie in examination of processes within the human brain.

Jason Hartman: There are a lot of interesting statements on your website, George, about uses of lie detectors and really people who have been really burned – I mean even references as “collateral damage”, tell us about some of those stories.

George Maschke: Well, sure. And perhaps the audience might be interested in knowing a little bit about my own background and how I can speak publicly about polygraph matters which is something, for me, when I was in active duty in the army, the word activist was a dirty word and the last thing that I ever wanted to be. So my first introduction to the polygraph was working as an interpreter for the interrogation of an intelligence source that had been recruited by the US Army intelligence plain clothes in East Berlin during the Cold War. So, I traveled to a West Berlin hotel room where he was to be polygraphed to make sure that he was working for us and not for the East Germans. So, I translated and at the end of the polygraph session, the polygraph operator wasn’t sure whether he was telling the truth or not, so he asked me what was my gut feeling, so I told him. Anyway, that left me not feeling very good about the reliability of polygraphs right there, that the polygraph operator would ask me for my gut feeling. Didn’t the machine work?

Anyway, so some years later, I got a commission in the Army Reserve. I met a top secret clearance as a technical intelligence officer and I got mobilized to work with the FBI on two different operations, one was with the Anti-Terrorist Task Force in Washington, D. C. during the first Persian Gulf War. And the second time was to work with the task force in New York in connection with the investigation of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

So, that experience working with the FBI on counterintelligence and counterterrorism cases made me think that I’d like to work with the FBI as a career, working counterterrorism. So I applied to be an FBI special agent. And when I went in and took the polygraph, I was accused of deception on the counterintelligence questions. These are questions like have you ever released classified information to anyone who was unauthorized to receive it? Have you ever had an unauthorized contact with a representative of a foreign government? Did anyone direct you to seek employment with the FBI? So, I was found deceptive with regard to all of these questions. It’s basically an accusation of being a spy, although it wasn’t put in exactly those words.

As a result, I was disqualified from FBI employment for life and eventually I had my security clearance revoked by the army. The adjudicator who made the decision to revoke my clearance openly speculated – I know this because I requested my file under the Freedom of Information Act – speculated that I might be involved in an international narcotrafficking ring.

Jason Hartman: Wow, scary.

George Maschke: Yeah, based on nothing more than polygraph chart readings. It’s really scary. My polygraph operator didn’t tell me this at the time, but I was also found deceptive on all of the drug questions having ever used or sold illegal drugs and whether I had falsified my application or not. So, I was found deceptive on everything. And I should state here that I was truthful on everything. I didn’t lie with regard to any of those questions. I never did any of the behaviors regarding which I was accused of deception.

So, my polygraph examiner told me that the polygraph was 98% accurate and I was kind of gullible then – I guess I still am, as are most people, and that that’s a good thing to be aware of about oneself that humans are gullible and generally fairly easily deceived. So, I took that at face value. I didn’t think an FBI agent would lie to me about the accuracy of the polygraph. So, I went to the research library at my university. I was a graduate student at UCLA at the time of my polygraph and I read everything I could find about polygraph and I learned, to my shock and dismay, that the polygraph is not 98% accurate as my polygraph operator claimed, but rather than the consensus view among scientists is that polygraph testing isn’t even a scientific procedure at all, that an error rate for it is not really knowable because of the lack of standardization. But, in practice, it’s quite common for truthful people to be falsely accused of deception. And in the context of criminal investigations, for example, that error rate may be as high as 50%. And it turns out that 50% is also to close approximation the failure rate of FBI applicants on the polygraph. It’s one of the requirements for the job you have to pass the polygraph. So, about half the people who applied for jobs for the FBI are failing the polygraph. The same goes for the CIA. The same goes for the Los Angeles Police Department and actually for numerous police departments across the country. In some cases, the failure rate is even higher. For example, the customs and border patrol, which has a big recruiting effort going on now, they’re trying to expand their numbers, their introducing polygraph screening for all applicants. And their reported polygraph failure rate is on the order of 60%. And bear in mind these are people who have been screened in advanced.

Jason Hartman: Okay, so I just want to clarify that, though. When you say failure rate, that means they’re not passing the test and so they’re not getting the job, right?

George Maschke: Right.

Jason Hartman: But some would say, George, isn’t that the point? We’re vetting these people, we’re getting the bad apples out because they are lying, right?

George Maschke: But that’s the thing. To assume that someone is lying because they have failed the polygraph is erroneous because polygraph doesn’t work as Dr. Drew Richardson who was the FBI’s senior polygraph expert, senior scientific polygraph expert, until his retirement about 10 years ago. As he put it, polygraph operators are involved in the detection of deception to the same extent that someone who leaps from a tall building is involved in flying.

Jason Hartman: That’s interesting the superman reference there. In the US, now I assume you lived in the US at one point, right?

George Maschke: Of course. I was born and raised here and I’ll eventually be going back.

Jason Hartman: In the United States in court proceedings, and I guess maybe we have to differentiate between criminal and civil, lie detectors, are they ever used? I mean, I never really hear about them in court rooms. How does the admissibility work? Or is it completely inadmissible? And maybe they’re siding with your philosophy that they’re just not credible at all?

George Maschke: The courts have indeed been very skeptical of polygraphs and other purported lie detectors like voice stress tests. However, it would be incorrect to say that there’s a blanket bar to the admissibility of polygraph evidence. For example, in some states, in criminal cases, if both the prosecution and the defense stipulate to the admissibility of a polygraph test’s result, then that can be admitted at trial. An example where this might happen is where a prosecutor has a weak case. He might say to the suspect, look, if you stipulate in advance that the results of a polygraph test that we will set up for you will be admissible in court, then if you pass we’ll consider dropping charges. And sometimes suspects grasp at that straw, often to their chagrin. And that’s a situation the polygraph test results might be admitted at trial.

Jason Hartman: That’s like a plea bargain, right? Basically, it’s sort of a way of doing a plea bargain almost. It’s not a plea, but it’s almost like take the test, and we’ll do this. But then the likelihood is the test is not going to go the way of the accused or the defendant.

George Maschke: Right. It’s more of a bargaining over admissibility of something that should not be admissible in any court of law. It’s like negotiating for the admissibility of tea leaf readings at trial or a tarot card fortune teller’s prognostications. And yet it happens. It truly boggles the mind if you understand just how much of a pseudoscientific sham polygraph testing really is.

Jason Hartman: You were going to mention one particular state when I asked you about the sort of pre-plea bargain.

George Maschke: Sure. This happens especially in the state of Ohio, although there are others, especially I believe in the southern portion of The United States. But in Ohio, it’s not so infrequent. And actually there’s a famous case of Floyd ‘Buzz’ Fay who took such a deal as this and failed the polygraph. It got admitted at court and he was convicted of first degree murder. It turned out he was completely innocent. And fortunately a good lawyer did his own investigation and solved the crime whereas the law enforcement and the prosecutor relied on the lie detector.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, the scary thing is sometimes the law enforcement, the DA’s office, they just want to find the perpetrator, and they’ll take anybody as a substitute, a patsy, especially if it’s like an election year where they’re trying to win re-election or there’s some political gain to be had. It just looks good on their resume. That’s really, really scary for an individual citizen, isn’t it?

George Maschke: Yes. And the lie detector is the lazy investigator’s friend as well as the lazy prosecutor’s friend. In these stipulated cases that I mentioned, it also gives the prosecutor an excuse for dropping a case against a suspect if he passes. You can say, look, we passed a polygraph, so he must be innocent. But there’s problems with that because while polygraph testing does have an inherent bias against the truthful, it’s also easily beaten by deceptive people.

One notorious case is the green river killer in the Pacific Northwest who the perpetrator in these cases was a man by the name of Gary Leon Ridgway. And he passed a polygraph test in 1984 because he was an early suspect. And so that cleared him and then he continued his killing spree until he was finally identified by DNA evidence in 2001. So, that’s 17 years free and continuing his crime spree because the cops believed in the lie detector. At the same, an innocent man failed the polygraph test and he became a prime suspect, a guy by the name of Melvin Foster. So, he had a cloud over his head from September, 1982 until Ridgway was finally identified as a perpetrator.

Jason Hartman: Everybody is probably thinking right now how do you beat a lie detector test? And we’ve all seen movies and interesting things about that.

George Maschke: Right. And you’ll never see how to really do it in the movies.

Jason Hartman: Okay. I was just kind of curious. Yeah, tell us about that.

George Maschke: It might be part laziness, but you’ll never really see how to beat it in the corporate media either, I think because they’re reluctant to give away police secrets. So, a trait that admittedly is sometimes useful for convincing gullible crooks to confess, but I think it’s important that people understand how it really works. And it is, in fact, quite easy to fool a lie detector, but you need to understand how it really works, which you won’t find mentioned in the movies or on television programs. So, let me explain really briefly. The big secret that you’re not supposed to know is that while the polygraph operators will tell you that you’re supposed to answer all questions truthfully and any hint of deception will be detected by the machine, they secretly expect that some of your answers are going to be deceptive. They call these questions control questions or comparison questions. And what they’re going to do is compare your reaction to the control question to your reaction to the relevant questions, the questions about the thing that they are really interested in. There’s also a third type of question called irrelevant questions, questions that the true answer is obvious to everyone. And these just serve as buffers between pairs of relevant and control questions.

So, let me give you some examples. Suppose, Jason, that you were suspected of robbing the bank. A relevant question a polygraph set up for you might be “Jason, did you rob that bank?”

Jason Hartman: Then I’d say no.

George Maschke: You’d say no. Even if you didn’t rob the bank, you might show a strong reaction to that question just because a suspect…

Jason Hartman: Maybe I would because I’m thinking about the Federal Reserve and how they’re robbing us or the banksters.

George Maschke: Sure. There’s any number of reasons why you might show a reaction to that question. And the polygraphists understand that. So, they think they’ve come up with a way to work around that and that’s a comparison question. So, when they ask did you rob the bank, they’ll compare your action to that with your reaction the question did you ever lie to get out of serious trouble?

Jason Hartman: Most people are gonna say yes to that one.

George Maschke: Right. And if they’re telling the truth, most people will say no in that sort of situation because we want to make sure that you’re not the kind of person who would rob the bank and then lie to the police about it and we find that people who lie to get out of trouble tend to go on and get into more trouble and be the kind of person who would rob the bank. So, if I ask you if you ever lied to get out of serious trouble, you could answer that “No”, couldn’t you? So, we’ll lead you on.

Jason Hartman: Well, I’m just thinking back to childhood. When you say ever, that’s an awful long time.

George Maschke: And most people will have some minor admissions to it, yeah, I didn’t tell my mom about that window I broke that I blamed the neighbor’s kid. So, you make your admissions, and suppose then you feel comfortable that you’re telling the truth? Say no, I never lied to get out of serious trouble. Well, your answer to that question is going to still be considered a probable lie even though you’ve made some admissions. And what they’re going to do is compare your reaction to that questions about lying to get out of trouble to your reaction about did you rob the bank. And whichever reaction is stronger is going to determine the outcome of the test. So, if you react more strongly when you say that you never lied to get out of trouble or serious trouble, then the inference is going to be that question bothers you more than the question about robbing the bank. So you must not have robbed the bank. Conversely, if you show a stronger reaction to the question about robbing the bank, then it’s inferred that, well, you must have robbed the bank.

Now, this methodology is simplistic because there’s a multiplicity of reasons why a person might react more strongly to one question or the other. You might realize that the question about lying to get out of serious trouble is not as important a question as the one about robbing the bank. And even though you’re innocent, you might just show a stronger reaction to the question about robbing the bank.

Similarly, you may have robbed the bank, but maybe with that question about lying to get out of serious trouble, maybe there is something else that you’ve done in your past where you lied to get out of serious trouble – maybe you’re a career criminal and you actually murdered someone and that’s what’s worrying you. Maybe you show a strong reaction to that question and as a consequence pass even though you did rob the bank.

And, of course, there’s another possibility and that’s where how to beat the polygraph comes in. You can create a reaction to the control question to offset any reaction to the relevant question to overpower it. Ways you can do this, for example, include solving a math problem in your head as fast as you can as soon as you recognize that a control question is being asked and that will produce a reaction detectable by the polygraph, it’ll register, but it’s undistinguishable from a reaction caused by fear of being caught in a lie.

Jason Hartman: What’s the thing about the math problem just out of curiosity? I don’t understand. Is it because it’s complex?

George Maschke: It could be anything that requires mental activity. The thing with a math problem is it should be a difficult problem and you should try to do it as fast as you can. That will tend to produce a breathing reaction as well as a cardio reaction, a change in heart rate and blood pressure and possibly an electro dermal reaction, too. So, it’s a good countermeasure. Another one is to bite the side of your tongue in a way that can’t be observed. You can practice this in front of a mirror. If I had my choice, if I were somehow persuaded to take a polygraph test, I would choose mental countermeasures because I don’t like pain. But tongue biting is another option.

And in peer reviewed studies where the examinees had a maximum of 30 minutes of coaching on how to fool a polygraph, 50% of deceptive examinees succeeded in passing.

Jason Hartman: Very interesting. Very scary that this technology is used with any degree of credibility. Maybe it’s just fun party games like the RadioShack thing I bought as a kid, maybe where it should relegated.

George Maschke: Yeah, or the Dr. Phil Show and other TV talk shows where they bring in the lie detector as a ratings gimmick. The questions are always about sex somehow and the outcome of the polygraph almost always is what the audience expect it’s going to be. And then people then say ooh, he was lying.

Jason Hartman: What about plants? Some science behind the idea of that plants have feelings and plants have I guess galvanic skin resistance. You can put a lie detector, the electrode I guess, onto the plant’s leaves, and then next to it if you destroy a plant and tear it up, it’ll have a reaction. What about plants and people and lie detectors? Do you have any thoughts on that?

George Maschke: Yeah, one of the luminaries of the polygraph world is Grover Cleveland Backster who ran a polygraph school in New York City, and actually his school is still in operation. It’s in San Diego now. But he had this idea, once in his office, that he had a plant, philodendron I believe, and he gave it some water and he was curious how long would it take the water to get from the roots up to the leaves. So he supposed there would be a change in conductivity when that happens, so he connected the finger plates to a leaf of the plant, gave it the water and just watched what happened. And he got the idea that the plant was reacting to his thoughts and he became convinced that plants and other living things can sense the feelings and intentions of others. And if this sounds rather kooky, it’s because it is, but he became celebrated for it. Scientists were not able to replicate his results in controlled double-blinded experiments.

Jason Hartman: I’ve heard, for example, with the plants issue, that if you were to take the plants in your house – say you had 5 plants in your house – and you were to attach lie detectors to all of the plants, and then you were to walk over to your kitchen and put a live lobster into the boiling water or shrimp into the boiling water, every plant in the house reacts supposedly.

George Maschke: Yeah, that’s the sort of claim that Cleve Backster makes, however this has never been replicated in peer reviewed scientific research.

Jason Hartman: What about the issue of playing classical music for plants and stuff like that? This is probably not your area, but I just thought I’d ask you because they’re using lie detectors to read the plant’s reactions. So, I don’t know if you know anything about that one.

George Maschke: Well, I do not know anything about how plants react to music or other sound.

Jason Hartman: Okay, just curious about that. So, on your website, it asks some interesting questions. The consensus view among scientists is that polygraph testing has no scientific basis. The FBI has considered the creator of the lie detector to be phony and crackpot. This is some of the stuff you’ve covered. And the man who started the CIA’s polygraph program thinks that plants can read human thoughts.

George Maschke: That’s Cleve Backster you’re talking about.

Jason Hartman: Amazing. Just really some amazing things here. I mean, what do you think the future holds for polygraphs?

George Maschke: Eventually polygraphy will go the same way as phrenology, that this was a 19th century pseudoscience where that continued into the early 20th century where it was believed that measuring the bumps on a person’s cranium could give you insight into their personality and mindset and whether they were criminal types, for example. So, that was completely bogus yet widely believed by many serious people. And now it just seems absurd to anyone who considers it. And I believe that’s the future that awaits polygraphy.

Jason Hartman: Yeah. Well, are there any actions one can take or any action items? What should people do here in this interview if people have the similar concern that you have, anything that they should do?

George Maschke: Yes, educate themselves. For example, if you’re applying for a job that requires polygraph screening, and most jobs in the private sector it’s not allowed under the 1988 Employee Polygraph Protection Act, however the government carved out a blanket exemption for federal state and local government. So, they can polygraph you, but private employers can’t.

So, if you’re applying for such a job, educate yourself. Learn how the polygraph test works, how it doesn’t, and learn what you can do to mitigate the risks of a false positive outcome. I would say if you’re interested in working for the FBI in particular, I would say don’t because the risk is just not worth the reward. If you fail the polygraph, you’re barred for life from FBI employment and you’re also blacklisted, that is your FBI polygraph failure is a permanent record and one that will come up if you seek positions of public trust with other federal agencies. And while it won’t necessarily bar you from employment with other agencies, it’ll be a black mark against you that will make it more difficult.

Jason Hartman: And you will have wasted your time. That’s the big thing. And not only that, who knows as the power of big brother just keeps increasing and the government becomes more and more intrusive, who knows, maybe you’ll find it difficult to get on an airplane. Maybe suddenly that database will be shared with TSA. It’s just crazy. And isn’t that interesting how the hypocrisy of the government, they can use the polygraph for pre-employment screening but the private sector cannot?

George Maschke: There are two other key situations where I could quickly tell listeners what they can do and how to protect themselves. First is if you’re ever asked by the police to take a polygraph test, say no. It’s not a test. It’s an interrogation, an interrogation where your lawyer is not allowed to be present. It’s a trick. You’re very likely to fail. And you may be told that you failed, regardless of what the polygraph charts say. Interrogation techniques can be coercive and manipulative with some agencies like the FBI. They will not be audio or video recorded so that the only record of what transpires in that room is what the polygraph operator says. And he can make things up that has happened in the past and if that happens, it’s your word, the criminal suspect, against the respected federal law enforcement officer.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, and guess who’s paying the polygraph administrator, too, right?

George Maschke: Sure. So say no to any offer to take a polygraph. In fact, don’t talk to the police at all. If you’re suspected or questioned about a crime in which you might be considered a suspect, get a lawyer and don’t talk to the police without your lawyer present.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, good advice. What’s the other situation?

George Maschke: The other situation, and an increasingly common one, is where a spouse or significant other suspects one of infidelity and people are being influenced by these shows like Dr. Phil or Maury Povich where they use lie detectors all the time to determine whether someone has been faithful or not. The polygraph is unreliable for this purpose, so don’t take the test. Now, refusing to take it will make you look suspicious, won’t it? But taking it and wrongly failing it will make you look even more suspicious. What people can do is, knowing about the lie detector themselves and how unreliable it is, share that with their significant other that polygraph testing is not the solution. It’s not going to resolve any trust issues. And, in fact, maybe someone in that situation says, well, I can use your countermeasures, the ones you mentioned on the site and that I mentioned in this interview to pass the polygraph. Well, that’s not a sure thing. It can only, at best, mitigate the risk of wrongly failing the polygraph. It cannot totally eliminate that risk. So your best course is just to say no and share with your spouse or significant other the truth about the lie detector and how it’s reliable. And also, if you take the polygraph test, even if you pass it, that’s significant other might just decide to Google “polygraph” themselves and then find out how unreliable polygraph is, how easily fooled it is through the use of simple countermeasures that polygraph operators can’t detect and then you’re back at square one but maybe you’re out $500 to $1000, the fee that you pay for the polygraph test.

Jason Hartman: Good point. Well, hey, this is very interesting. Give out your website if you would.

George Maschke: It’s AntiPolygraph.org. And our book there is The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. It’s free as is everything on our website.

Jason Hartman: Fantastic. Well, just out of curiosity, what are you doing this for? Is it just a passion that you have and you’re really behind the cause of helping people know the truth? I mean, everything’s free, it’s a good website, you’ve got lots of great info on there. I’ve just got to ask that, George.

George Maschke: Yeah, we’re doing this in the public interest because too much harm is coming from misplaced reliance on the pseudoscience of polygraphy and the first step to ending it is public education.

Jason Hartman: Well, fantastic. Well, thank you for doing that and donating this information to the world. And I hope people will check out the website. It’s AntiPolygraph.org and thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate it.

George Maschke: It’s been a pleasure speaking with you, Jason.

Narrator: Now is your opportunity to get the Financial Freedom Report. The Financial Freedom Report provides financial self-defense in uncertain times. And it’s your source for innovative forward thinking investment property strategies and advice. Get your newsletter subscription today. You get a digital download and even more. Go to JasonHartman.com to get yours today.

Thank you for joining us today for the Holistic Survival Show, protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our Creating Wealth Show, which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today’s economy. Learn more at www.JasonHartman.com or search “Jason Hartman” on iTunes. This show is produced by The Hartman Media Company, offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional. Information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. (Image: Flickr | celesteh)

Transcribed by Ralph

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