Polygraphs and the truth

There was a reason I went on about that lie detector story last time. It's called progress. Consider what was going on, or not going on, back in 1962 when that happened.

Very few people even had color TVs. There was no such thing as cable or a satellite dish. We could choose between channels 2,4,7, and 9. Period. High definition was obtained by adjusting the "rabbit ears" on top of the TV set when one turned the rotary dial to change the channel. Remote controls were decades away. The word "digital" had to do with one's fingers or toes. Look at the technology now.

Nobody had microwave ovens or home computers, much less laptops or Ipads. Pagers weren't even invented yet, let alone smart phones. Getting an AM/FM radio on a passenger car was considered a luxury. No CD's, DVD's, etc. Take a look around these days.

We were 7 years away from putting a man on the moon. Knowledgable people have said that all the capabilities that were included in the computers that were aboard the Apollo moon shots, could easily be contained in a modern day cell phone, with room to spare. It's incredible when you think about it. Most citizens flew on airplanes that had propellers. Since then the US's Skylab and the USSR's Mir space stations have been built, outlived their usefulness, and crashed back to earth.

Amazing strides have been made in the worlds of science, medicine, and just about everything else.

The point is that if a 6th grader could build a functional lie-detector a half century ago, then adults that had much more expertise in such things could no doubt build better ones. Fast forward 50 years and it's not much of a stretch to assume the people that engineer these machines have made the same amount of progress in their technology as the above examples.

Translation? I'm thinking the modern-day polygraphs are so sophisticated, they're virtually impossible to fool.

So here's an idea. Want to know if Lance Armstrong was doping? Wire him up and ask him. Instead of taking 5-6 years and millions of dollars, it would take about 5 minutes and we'd know what happened -- or didn't. Same with Roger Clemens and all the other alleged steroid users. We don't need congressional hearings that prove nothing in the end (no pun intended regarding the Rocket and where he may have been injected) -- we need a technician.

Jonathan Vilma, the linebacker and alleged ring-leader of the New Orleans Saints' "bounty-gate" fiasco, recently stated they (the NFL) have nothing on paper tieing him to any wrong doing. Therefore, he should never have been suspended. Well OK. Step right over here Jonathan to this polygraph. We have a few questions we'd like to ask. It'll only take a couple minutes. Have Roger Goodell waiting outside, because he's next. This whole mess would have been over a long time ago.

Same with Penn State and their former president recently being accused of a cover up. Or the NHL vs The Players union. The average sports fan doesn't know what's going on. One way to find out. Quiz the former Prez, and wire up commissioner Gary Bettman, to be followed by union chief Donald Fehr. It might have gotten ugly, but one way or the other, the NHL season would have started on time. And isn't playing the games what it's supposed to be about anyway? Hello?

There are those that would say wait a minute. Polygraphs aren't allowed in court, because they're not always reliable. People that are mentally unhinged and pathological liars can sometimes defeat them. That may be true, but yours truly would counter by saying asking a crazy person questions in the first place won't exactly yield reliable testimony. Further, what do we have now?

Lawyers on both sides lie all the time anyway. Sometimes guilty people walk. Innocent folks are sometimes thrown in prison for years, maybe even executed, for a crime they never committed. Both ways, it's all because there were too many lies going on for various reasons. And that's not right.

We don't hear much about polygraphs these days, and most of us don't even know what one looks like. I suspect there's another larger reason for that.

If lie-detectors have made the same progress in the last 50 years as most other things, they have to be kept a tightly guarded secret. Because if they ever get as popular as microwaves and cell phones, 90% of the lawyers would no longer be needed -- and we just couldn't have that. Could we?

Besides quickly resolving various sports issues, think of the other possible benefits. When politicians are on TV, have them wired up. A green light means truth, and a red light means another lie. I dare say those debates would get a whole lot more interesting. And you just know that once they become available to the public, some Asian country will find a way to miniaturize it and sell them back to us for a couple hundred bucks or so. Hand held versions. Suspect your spouse or kids of being up to no good? No more counselors or endless questions and answers that still leave you wondering. You could know for sure in a couple minutes.

If the technology got REALLY good, they might even devise a way to put sensors on keyboards to determine whether sports writers or bloggers are telling the truth or just plain "full of it" when they're typing out their articles.

Hmmm. On second thought, that's getting a little too close to home. Maybe this isn't such a good idea after all.

Nevermind.