Of toilet seats, polygraphs

Rocky Mountain News: We'll reserve judgment on how it happened that Bob Dougherty came to be glued to a toilet seat, and also on whether it happened once, or twice.
But we do have to say that someone who apparently hopes to collect $3 million by suing over a prank doesn't exactly enhance his credibility with a "lie detector" test -- because such test results are suspect in almost any context.
Dougherty has sued Home Depot over a 2003 incident in Louisville, Colo., when he sat on a toilet seat and became stuck to it. He and his lawyer say the claim is justified because the store's employees didn't respond promptly to his calls for help and because there weren't any paper toilet-seat covers in the restroom.
After doubts were raised about his toilet-seat tale, Dougherty's lawyer said his client would take a polygraph test provided some news organization paid for it. Denver's Fox 31 News took the bait, and hired a polygrapher from Wheat Ridge, Colo., to administer the test. Dougherty took the test in his lawyer's office on Wednesday, and according to the polygrapher, he passed.
Good television
The polygraph angle may have made for good television. Unfortunately, it also reinforces the public view that polygraph tests are reliable enough that the results actually mean something.
The American Polygraph Association claims a very high accuracy rate, but then it would. Outside critics give the process much less credence, and in 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a military rule that polygraph results were too unreliable to be admitted even as evidence for the defense.
It is true that guilty people who believe lie-detector tests are always correct may indeed be so nervous about being caught in a lie that they confess even before being tested, or avoid applying for jobs where they know they would undergo a test. Most private employers are prohibited from requiring job applicants to take polygraph tests, but law-enforcement agencies can use them and many do.
But these outcomes, even if they are mildly useful, result more from public belief in the validity of the test than from its actual success rate, which is disputed.
There are so many spurious reasons that people can pass or fail polygraph tests that it's pointless to accept the results as serious evidence. We wish Fox had just passed on Dougherty's offer.