Word: polygraph
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...sides even disagree on specific facts, matters which would seem to be necessarily true or false. For example, Sickler, who worked for Coors during the 60s and 70s, says that employees were subjected to polygraph tests before being hired and while employed. In sworn affidavits before the House subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations, Sickler and three other former Coors employees stated that they were asked personal questions during their preemployment lie detector sessions, including questions such as "What is your sex preference?," "Are you a Communist?," and "Have you ever smoked marijuana...
William Coors maintains that the lie detector tests only occurred before an employee was hired and that they never asked any questions about sexual or political practices. And, he suggests that the whole point is currently moot because Coors no longer asks any potential employees to take polygraph tests. Instead, all prospective Coors employees are asked to take a urinalysis test...
...November 1, President Reagan had issued a national security directive on combatting espionage. In it, he called for widespread polygraph testing to cut down on the flow of sensitive information into the hands of enemy agents and enemy journalists. The directive made all Federal employees with access to such information, including Cabinet officials, subject to random lie-detector testing. After the directive was made public, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger '38 said that taking the test "wouldn't bother me a bit." But Secretary of State Shultz would have none of it. "The day in this Government I am told...
...answer is simple. There is no difference. Shultz says drug-testing is "a different concept" from polygraph testing. Reagan is trying to skirt the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures--it's right there, in the Fourth Amendment--by making the tests "voluntary." Both men, though, should know better...
This leads into the second practical argument against testing. The tests are far from infallible. Shultz explained that he had no misgivings against drug-testing as opposed to polygraph-testing because "Drug-testing is a much more reliable scientific tool. It is a definitive test. It's relatively non-intrusive." True, false, false. Drug-testing is more reliable than truth-testing. The polygraph test, with an accuracy of some 50 percent is about as accurate a measure of honesty as coin-flipping. But drug tests still have a margin of error of 2-11 percent. With 1.1 million federal employees...