Polygraphs Can Detect Lies at a Rate Significantly Better Than

question 71

True/False

Polygraphs can detect lies at a rate significantly better than chance is able to because polygraphs have low error rates.

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Definitions:

Science

The disciplined pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and truth through experimental observation, empirical evidence, and theoretical explanation.

Experience

Practical interaction with the world and the knowledge we gain through it. Today the term science tends to be limited to those questions that can and must be answered by reference to experience and extrapolations from experience.

Extrapolations

Predictions or inferences about unknown data made based on known or observed information.

Rational

In accordance with the rules of effective thought concerning coherence, consistency, practicability, simplicity, comprehensiveness, looking at the evidence and weighing it carefully, not jumping to conclusions, and so on. Rationality may not guarantee truth; all the evidence and everything we believe may point to one conclusion, and yet later generations, who know things that we do not, may see that our conclusion was incorrect. It was rational thousands of years ago to believe that the earth was flat, even though it was not true. It is not rational for us to believe the same thing, for our evidence and all sorts of other beliefs indicate, rather, that it is rational to believe that the earth is (more or less) spherical.