Local anglers reached out to NBC CT Responds upset that they were disqualified from the bluefish tournament after failing the lie detector test. They swear they weren’t spinning fish stories.
Fair fishing? Polygraph testing used in local bluefish tournament – NBC Connecticut
Has there been cheating in fishing competitions? Yes. But there is a reason why polygraphs are not admitted in court nor they forbidden to use to get a regular job. They do not really tell if somebody is lying or telling the truth.
(tin foil hat moment)- all part of normalizing “lie detector “.. oh you want to buy a gun? here take this test… FAIL! now you a felon..like the old commie said- “its not who votes, but who counts the votes”… its not about the test, but who grades the test… Americans have to learn to say NO.
Down through the past eighteen years, here in the Bass Fishing Capital of the World, the central Florida ‘Big Money” sponsored bass tournament clubs did impose the requirement for the top three winners to undergo a polygraph test in order to be awarded their placement prize money. But after similar problems such as this post focuses on, these requirements were abandoned. Some guys just get too nervous when having their personal integrity questioned. They ‘feel’ as if they’re being insulted which is interpreted as being ‘furtive’ and thus the test produces a negative outcome.
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So they addressed and solved the concern over cheating by increasing entry fees in order to cover hiring on-boat officials to witness each bass fishing team’s catches. The sponsored bass fishing teams welcomed this change, but the non-sponsored teams declined to continue their memberships and instead formed new smaller private clubs which require membership sponsorship.
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Then covid occurred and today we’re back to the historical norm of the honor system.
Indeed. Polygraphs only tell if someone is in an emotionally or physically heightened state, and then a technician reads the result to “determine” if that means they were lying (the technician could also be lying; is he/she subject to polygraphing, too?). Outside of independently verifying whatever is being asked — in which case, why are you even asking? — there’s no way to differentiate between willful deception and simple nervousness (and for some people, lying comes so easily that the machine won’t catch it at all!).
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Bottom line: It’s so far from 100% accurate that it cannot be used for any serious purpose.
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Of course, all this has been known for years if not decades. But people still believe pop culture myths that polygraphs are perfect lie detection devices that never fail and cannot be falsified.
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Now, a bass fishing tournament is not a criminally/legally risky use-case, so some people might think using a polygraph to verify truth might be acceptable. It’s still not; there’s real prize money on the line and for a professional angler, that’s his/her livelihood! Even without that, the potential damage to a fisherman’s reputation — are they honest about their catches, or are they prone to wild exaggerations? — can have very real consequences.
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Nah, the best move is to forego technological voodoo and just have a way to independently verify all claims. Having an on-boat official might be the best way, but requiring a photo of a caught fish against a tape measure and scale is a decent low-budget option, too.
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It’s easy enough to NOT use polygraphs, that one wonders: “What the Hell were they thinking!?”