News reports that Christine Blasey Ford took a polygraph or “lie-detector” test last month in order to bolster the credibility of her accusations against Brett Kavanaugh breathe new life into one of the oldest zombies in American legal and political culture. The belief that polygraph machines can reliably sort deception from truth lives for eternity no matter how many times it is shown to be nonsense. No matter how many times the National Academies or the American Psychological Association explain why polygraphs are hokum, lawyers who ought to know better will advise their clients to get wired up to one of these pseudo-scientific thingamabobs, preferably operated by some retired FBI agent who may or may not know better. Here are a few other such immortal zombie beliefs: Harry Truman ended World War II by nuking Hiroshima, Wernher von Braun aimed at the stars, tax cuts for the rich trickle down to the poor, and Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Evidently so many Americans need these tales so badly that historians might as well pack their shelves and retire to Tuscany. Likewise, psychologists should head permanently for Wellfleet rather than waste any more time explaining why polygraphing is junk science. The polygraph test, a sort of Grand Guignol, “works” only to the extent that it impresses foolish audiences, of which we apparently never run out. That Ford, herself a psychologist, chose to participate in this theater suggests the never-ending persuasive power of the genre in Washington. Good luck to her, in any case.
