Would you fire an employee based on pseudoscience?
Would you fire an employee who "failed" a polygraph?
shareThe lie detector test determined: you are watching too much "Maury."
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MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Would you fire an employee based on pseu...
Only if the pseudoscience interfered with their job.
Like if a person was hired as a geographer and they believed the Earth is flat. Or someone who believed that "big pharma" is poison and that Faith can heal all ills being hired as a pharmacist.
Why the hell a polygraph is "pseudoscience"?
Polygraphs have an accuracy rate of 80% more or less. This is not enough by any means, and that's why they're rarely used. But that doesn't make it "pseudoscience".
Not to say they don't even enter the science field. They're tools. It's technical stuff, not scientific. Talking about "pseudoscience" here is like saying that a cheap watch is "pseudoscience" because it doesn't give the time accurately. WTF?
There's a trend about using "pseudo-science" or "anti-science" to label things people don't like. As Iñigo de Montoya famously said: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
INCONCEIVABLE!
share"Why the hell a polygraph is "pseudoscience"?"
Because the premise itself has no evidence to support it:
The accuracy (i.e., validity) of polygraph testing has long been controversial. An underlying problem is theoretical: There is no evidence that any pattern of physiological reactions is unique to deception. An honest person may be nervous when answering truthfully and a dishonest person may be non-anxious. Also, there are few good studies that validate the ability of polygraph procedures to detect deception. As Dr. Saxe and Israeli psychologist Gershon Ben-Shahar (1999) note, "it may, in fact, be impossible to conduct a proper validity study." In real-world situations, it's very difficult to know what the truth is.
https://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph
"Polygraphs have an accuracy rate of 80% more or less."
There's no proof of that, nor is there proof for any other accuracy rate. You might as well try to assign an accuracy rate to tarot card readings.
"They're tools. It's technical stuff, not scientific."
The OP obviously isn't talking about the tool itself, he's talking about the "lie detector" test for which the tool is used. The test is pseudoscience because it's based on an unsupported premise.
"Talking about "pseudoscience" here is like saying that a cheap watch is "pseudoscience" because it doesn't give the time accurately."
That's not even a remotely valid analogy. A watch simply measures the passage of time. If a polygraph were only used to record the things that it directly measures (i.e., certain types of physiological activity such as pulse and respiration), then it wouldn't be pseudoscience. When someone, without basis, proclaims that those physiological measurements indicate whether or not someone is lying, that's when it becomes pseudoscience. share
You really pwned kukuxu
shareLie detectors are rarely used because the results are no better than a coin flip, there are just as many false positives as there are false negatives...
I still say Iñigo de Montoya didn't understand what https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/inconceivable?q=INCONCEIVABLE meant
Sure, why not ? Any excuse will do.
Swiftly.
Not really pseudoscience. There are issues like they're not as accurate with psychopaths.
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