Scientist Organizes Resistance To Polygraphs 405
George Maschke writes "Brad Holian, a senior scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is using a blog to organize resistance to plans for random polygraph and drug testing of Lab scientists. Holian writes: 'Polygraphy is an insulting affront to scientists, since a committee of the National Academy of Sciences has declared that, beyond being inadmissible in court, there is no scientific basis for polygraphs. In my opinion, by agreeing to be polygraphed, one thereby seriously jeopardizes his or her claim to being a scientist, which is presumably the principal reason for employment for many scientists at Los Alamos.'"
Polygraphs work--sorta (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Polygraphs work--sorta (Score:5, Insightful)
"It would be a shame if something were to happen with your kneecaps..."
They do not work (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Polygraphs work--sorta (Score:5, Informative)
1) Relying on people believing a lie is bad policy. Especially if some of those aware of the truth (that it's a lie) refuse to take it, and are then fired.
2) And this 'sorta working' is very unreliable. Even if you know it's a lie, you can still get nervous while taking the test - just because you know that all they are doing is checking how nervous you are. So the tester can't know what a person acting nervous during the polygraph means - could be guilty, could be innocent.
3) Actually, polygraphs can be used in a scientifically correct manner, but nearly never are. The WRONG way is to ask questions like 'did you kill Mike?' - which make anyone nervous, guilty or innocent. The RIGHT way is to do a randomized statistical test, as follows: say Mike was killed by a shotgun, a fact which only the police know. You can then ask the suspect the following questions: "was Mike killed by a rifle?" "[...] a shotgun?" "[...] a handgun?" "[...] a knife?" etc. etc. Only the killer would know the true weapon, so if your suspect reacts differently to the 'shotgun' question, that would be informative. Of course other elements would also have to be statistically accounted for: you'd need to ask several controls the same questions (just to see that "shotgun" isn't a word that evokes special responses in general); to randomize the order of the questions; to have the person asking the questions not know the answers; and so forth. Basically, to do the same things you'd do in a scientific experiment.
But this is (a) hard and time-consuming, and (b) not always possible (you need information only the killer would know).
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No, polygraphs are just bullshit, period. There is no scientific way to employ them because they make a fatally flawed assumption: that lying causes increases in vital measurements. There is absolutely no evidence at all to support this assumption. Increases in vitals like body temperature, perspiration and heart rate correlate with nervousness, not deception. Furthermore, a suspect reacting to the word "shotgun" is not informative in the slightest. The shotgun from Doom might've just been his favorite weap
Re:Polygraphs work--sorta (Score:5, Informative)
Common polygraph use assumes that lying causes increases in vital measurements, yes. But notice that what I mentioned in my post was a difference in vital measurements. If you get enough randomized trials, you can conduct a statistical test just like of every other scientific hypothesis.
Yes, perhaps some people react more to "shotgun", and some respond less. If, out of 100 people, the suspected killer reacts in a not-statistically-significantly-different manner, then that is one thing. But if, on the other hand, he reacts in a unique way, then the odds of that occurring were he not privy to information about the shotgun would be 1% (i.e. the Null Hypothesis is that all 100 people tested are the same, so the chance that a single person has a different result by chance, and that that person is our suspect, is at most 1 in 100 - speaking in general terms).
Increases in vitals like body temperature, perspiration and heart rate correlate with nervousness, not deception.
Agreed, which is why an increase in these vitals in a single individual is not enough, by itself, to show anything.
Furthermore, a suspect reacting to the word "shotgun" is not informative in the slightest. The shotgun from Doom might've just been his favorite weapon in that game. Or he might have some other past traumatic experience with a shotgun. It means nothing.
As I said above, this is possible, yes - it can occur by chance. But by a correct statistical test, you can check whether the reaction is explainable by coincidence or not. This is exactly the same way surveys are done or experiments in medicine or the social sciences. (Of course it isn't perfect, but then nothing is 100% perfect; the law can convict above a reasonable doubt.)
Polygraphs are just another interrogation tool to make the suspect feel more powerless and make the interrogator look more powerful.
Agreed. Polygraphs, as they are commonly used, are useless or worse than useless (dishonest, easily abused, etc.). But what I wrote in the post you are responding to is something completely different.
A note about the basic science behind this stuff: there is plenty of evidence of bodily responses to familiar stimuli (for example the cognitive psychology literature on 'priming', also electrophysiology, etc.). However, the commonly-used polygraph may not use the measures proven to work. If all it does is test blood pressure and GSR (galvanic skin response), then we may be right to be skeptical (although perhaps research on GSR has improved in recent years - I don't know). However, things like EEG are also non-invasive and easy to test, and research has shown them to be informative about various things. So: even if the commonly-used polygraph is a sham, correct use of science and statistics can be used to devise a better method, and hopefully things will continue to progress in that direction.
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I'm unaware of any valid experimental design that uses a sample size of 1. A more reasonable design would be to treat 50 and give a placebo to 50 and see if the proportions showing side effects in the two groups differ by more than what could reasonably be attributed to chance.
As far as random screening is concerned, you must consider the positive and negative predictive values of the tests. A
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
True, and a good point - although the sample size isn't 1, in what I described, just one of the groups is of that size. But your argument is still strong (more on this later).
From the false positive and false negative rates you have to compute the positive (and negative) predictive value -- that is, the probability that somebody who tests positive (or negative) really has (or does not have) what the test shows. To compute positi
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I have to agree. Having worked in a highly secure yet reasonably managed environment, the respect accorded to staff members made me feel more secure than any level of invasive physical or psychological measures could. Treating people like criminals can encourage them to act that way.
By the way, I recently found this [antipolygraph.org] site of polygraph criticisms.
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Whether or not you believe it is a lie is often not relevant. If the subject/victim knows that the purpose is to find out who committed a specific act, it is likely that there will be some sort of response when that question is asked, whether the subject/victim committed that act or not. I know of one case where the employee knew that he was going to be asked about taking money from the safe. They asked the que
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Polygraphs ... (Score:4, Interesting)
-b.
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It is not. It is junk pseudoscience, and has debunked over and over and over. And no, it is not just some psy-ops thing as one other poster said -- people actually put their faith in these things.
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Then, at the end: Surprise --- it's caffeine!
I don't remember the
Re:Polygraphs ... (Score:4, Funny)
We should also ban a substance from food where a single ounce already is deadly. But you can buy a substance like this in food stores in packages of a quarter pound and more: Sodiumchloride (NaCl), better known as SALT.
And we need to ban fruits whose main taste is provided by a substance (Furaneol and Methoxyfuraneol), which is deadly if taken in micrograms. Lets ban strawberry.
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Across the board? Hard to say. Have I met, worked with, or been exposed to obvious stoners that are clearly and continually unfocused, un-energetic, bad on short-term memory, and always looking for free food at meetings? Yes. Should any use of the word "dude" at the workplace result in immediate termination? Double-plus-extra yes.
Re:Polygraphs ... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a huge difference between drug use and drug *abuse*. Profile based on behaviour, not based on chemical testing. If someone's a lazy obnoxious git, by all means fire him if he doesn't shape up, regardless of the reason.
This is like the difference between a red-faced drunkard and someone that has a glass of wine at dinner.
-b.
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For larger organizations, esp. government or those that work with the government, it can be very difficult to fire anyone after hiring them, regardless of cause. For example, I understand that at Motorola, an employee who fails a drug test is offered firing or on-the-clock drug coun
Re:Do you really want a law breaker? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, for gahd's sake, just because you break a few minor laws does *not* mean that you'd be more likely sell out your country to the enemy-of-the-day. By your "slippery slope" logic, anyone who gets caught for speeding should be pre-emptively shot. After all, who's to say when they'll move from speeding to treason?
-b.
It's not a slippery slope (Score:2)
It's already there. You've committed a crime that can be used to blackmail you. The same can hardly be said about speeding. Also, I'm not talking about shooting anyone. I'm talking about not hiring them for a position that you said was vital to our nation's defense. Obviously, you found nothing wrong with my actual point. Otherwise you wouldn't have tried to change what I said. I eschew slippery slope arguments.
Oh, and yes, speeding is also breaking the law. People who lightly dismiss it as such demonstra
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Actually, if there's a policy of dismissal for minor offenses that don't impact work performance, blackmail becomes more likely. If someone brings the average police department evidence that someone was merely smoking weed, they'd probably ask if they had anything better to do. To an employer this might be a much bigger deal.
-b.
A valid point (Score:2)
Still, for matters dealing with national security, I think it's not too much to ask that employees stay off the ganja. I will admit that having never been tempted by the stuff, I'm not in the best position to judge. Still, we are talking about nuclear technology.
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I don't think there is a living adult person in the USA that hasn't broken a law yet. I would think that at least a huge percentage of the population breaks them on a regular basis (and please think in the broad sense - I don't mean just drug use).
The fact is, the legal system is not ideal, and that is an understatement. If it is not ideal, not all laws shou
Breaking the law deliberately (Score:2)
However, I doubt a "hugh percentage" of the population deliberately breaks the law on a regular basis. (The fact that so many might regularly break the law on accident is indicative of a problem with our legal system.) Also, how many of those broken laws could
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If you're breaking the law because the law is stupid, useless, and outdated, and you're not harming anyone whilst doing so, it doesn't upset me one bit. Just try not to get caught if you're a friend of relative or mine, because that'll make me sad.
-b.
Apathy (Score:2)
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You can't change everything. And there are more ways to change a law than one. Plenty of laws have fallen by the wayside while being ignored and disused while still being "in the books." Things like Virginia having a law against a black man marrying a white woman until two years ago or Connecticut(?) prescribing the death penalty for adultery.
-b.
Two reasons (Score:2)
I used to have a job that involved "selling" (something I didn't enjoy at all). My former boss told me that when a client gives you more than one reason for why he doesn't want the product, the truth is that the real reason is probably one not given.
You say there are more ways to change a law than one. I agree completely. There's civil disobedience. There's running for office. There's even voting. What these have in common i
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I think if you include speeding offences, the OP is probably correct - driving on a freeway, the vast majority of people are doing more than 65. Even on back-streets, more people than not go over 35/45... A rather large fraction of people drive, and if the majority of those are speeding, the percentage of lawbreakers may indeed be huge...
Simon
Did I really say "hugh percentage"? (Score:2)
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If I break a law I either do it accidentally or because I think it is not right. I guess the latter is a mixture of disregard of the law and protest, the ratio depends on the particular law.
In this particular case, there are the conflicting ideas. The law says, you can't smoke weed but the person wants to smoke wee
Different moral philosophies (Score:2)
Well, I guess we just have different moral philosophies, and that's OK. Personally, I think that laws should be followed unless there's a compelling reason not to. Because you "want to" is not very compelling. OTOH, I can think of a few things that I might be tempted to break the law over if they were made illegal, even without a reason I'd consider "compelling". I also believe that (almost) all laws have some rationality behind them; it's just a question of whether you agree with that rationale. Part of my
I've already addressed these points (Score:2)
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So should we sack all government employees who receive a speeding ticket?
Funny you should mention it... speeding tickets can get you disqualified from nuclear work.
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Yes! I read and post on Slashdot.
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But, at that point, shouldn't they be fired for being stoners, rather than the fact that they like to get stoned? I mean, if a worker is useless, why bother with a drug test at al
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I must say, I'm a little curious about your definition of "extreme right," or at least, how it is that you see me fitting into it. Anti-abortion, prayer-in-school types? Cannot abide them. Organized religion in general? I consider it humanity's greatest continuing social plague. "Intelligent design" proponents? Intellectually disengenuos self-destructive fools. Absurd pork spending by congress? Infuriating. Etc. Which "extreme right" are you lumping me in with,
Re:Polygraphs ... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I have a serious heroin problem, I may get myself into so much debt and other trouble that I wind up being used by some foreign spy group or something (if I worked at Los Alamos of course). Or maybe I don't want my habit getting out and therefore can be blackmailed. That sort of thing. This is similar to how homosexual people have been targetted in prior decades; not because a gay person can't do the work, but because having this secret you really want to keep means you can be blackmailed with it.
Then again (Score:2)
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Back to the topic, I remember reading in the biography of John Nash, that he was fired from RAND for his homosexual tendencies, along with some other people, while in fact some of those people were completely open about it. The policy was to get rid of homosexuals, but there was no proper risk assessment done, if there is any blackmail potential to it, etc. The McCarthy era witchhunts did more harm than good and same applies to not properly evaluating the risk of blackmail or ide
Compromised (Score:2)
Supposedly money will get you info, but they won't put their necks out. Ideology gets you great info, but they're unstable. Thrill seekers are james-bond wannabees... and blackmail, well, people do things to protect their dirty secrets.
All I gotta say is "Tough Shit". If you want them
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They are NOT accurate. A friend of mine lie
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It also weeds out people that answers questions without thinking. From what I've heard, if you interview with the NSA or CIA and they ask "have you ever given money to a foreign organization?" and your answer is an unthinking "no", this weeds you out. After all, you buy stuff from foreign companies all of the time without even realizing it.
-b.
Re:Polygraphs ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think a drug test is meaningless. I know a significant numbe rof recreational pot and E users to function fine at work. I think a credit check is better. One check and it will tell you the likelyhood of Scientist x selling yoru secrets to the chinese/russians/islamists/EU. People who tend to do these things tend to have financial problems ot start with.
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Although still not perfect. Drug dealers and loan sharks would be unlikely to report outstanding debts. They tend to have other slightly more effective ways of dealing with the situation.
-b.
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They wouldn't. My point was that debts to certain people would be unlikely to show up on a credit report. And, breaking kneecaps is a far more effective threat to people than foreclosure or bad credit. So people with debts to criminals may well be *more* amenable to blackmail.
-b.
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I think a credit check is better. One check and it will tell you the likelyhood of Scientist x selling yoru secrets to the chinese/russians/islamists/EU. People who tend to do these things tend to have financial problems ot start with.
lol, yeah implement credit checks in the USA aka creditland... everyone will be a suspect! The average US household requires debt to operate daily (we have a negative savings rate) and millions of homeowners have no hope in hell of paying off their IO mortgages which will reset to higher interest rates this year.
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Not the chinese. Their favorite method is to find someone of chinese origins and then convince them that sharing information is a duty of one sort another, patriotic or for the good of any family they still have back in China. That's an over simplification, but the chinese m
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Most (not all) of the charges against Wen Ho Lee were dropped; Lee plea bargained. As a physicist, I know people who know people at LANL, and usually up on the general lab gossip, but I don't actually know the reality of Lee's case. He may in fact have been spying and the government gave him a deal becau
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They shouldn't work while they're affected by the drug. What they do on weekends or vacations is their own choice, so long as they come to work sober and alert.
-b.
Richard Feynmann (Score:5, Interesting)
Cheers,
-b.
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I don't believe he his written any books about his youth. A non-scientist friend of his wrote
- Surely you are joking, mister Feynmann
- What do you care what other people think
based on conversation with Feynmann, those two books were very popular in college.
Another of those (Score:2)
What a genius idea (Score:5, Interesting)
So they attached this to one of those emergency defense appropriation bills:
Your Congress at work.
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Although I don't think it was one of the "emergency" bills, just the yearly defense budget bill for 2002. I'm not sure our habit of having yearly defense budget emergency bills extends further back than 2003 and I'm too lazy to look it up. Still, whether
As promoted by the FSB... (Score:5, Informative)
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Bah, that's so 1990s. Now they just provide free sample packets of polonium to bosses to help them deal with disloyal employees.
-b.
What is it with Americans and drug tests (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't it kind of obvious when someone's personal life is interfering with their professional life?
Is it so hard to take the cue from the rest of the world, where such nonsense is not even considered (with no apparent ill effects)?
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Three points not made in the thread above are:
As seen in CivIV: "The bureaucracy is expanding to support the needs of an expanding bureaucracy."
Noise like the poly is merely a side effect of the kudzu-esque bureaucracy.
Management by chickens (Score:2)
For large organizations, for some reason management is often afraid to fire people with the explanation that they do a poor job. They wan
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Not always, and, more importantly, not always soon enough.
The point of random drug testing in a facility like Los Almos is to identify the user before he becomes a security risk, before he becomes a danger to himself and others.
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It doesn't require drug testing, however. This according to the Department of Labor site [dol.gov] and the text of the law itself. Basically, it requires employers and employees to sign statements that drug use in the workplace is forbidden and can result in loss of employment.
-b.
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Bob works in the loading docks, he moves cases and has a hazmat certificate. He also likes chronic.
Ted is a clerk doing accounting and random bureaucracy crap. He's also a closeted homosexual (mostly due to his own ability to acknowledge it and the fact he's really only Bi and has a wife and kids). In order to enjoy himself he takes meth.
Jon is a PhD working on a project deep in the labs. He also likes to take X when he has sex.
Each of them is both a work place hazard and a security
Maybe if (Score:2)
That said, having taken a polygraph, I think the true value lies in the "good-cop/bad-cop" environment that it creates.
Here's a simple question... (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither can I. It never happened.
TFA is completely correct on polygraphs.
Wrong again.... (Score:4, Informative)
Jim Nicholson - convicted of spying for Russia
There's two. There's hundreds found... and even many more before they get off the ground- how many people could be compromised had they been given access?
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It's necessary (Score:2, Funny)
The lie behind the lie detector (Score:5, Informative)
Long story short: the polygraph is a pile of pseudo-scientific bullshit, that can be easily beaten by anyone that knows how it works. At its core, its basically just a non-standardized investigation protocol for extracting harmful confessions by deceiving the person being investigated.
After educating myself, I passed a polygraph easily the first time, without any preparation or practice, while directly lying to my investigator. For the record, what they were asking was none of my employer's business (in my opinion). I was previously warned that the average session takes an hour, and can sometimes run into 3-4 hours when there are "complications". However, by manipulating my physiological responses to a few critical control questions, and pretending to be appropriately intimidated and impressed by the investigator and his machine, I was out of there in 15 minutes, which I was later told was something of a record.
From http://antipolygraph.org/ [antipolygraph.org]:
The dirty little secret behind the polygraph is that the "test" depends on trickery, not science. The person being "tested" is not supposed to know that while the polygraph operator declares that all questions must be answered truthfully, warning that the slightest hint of deception will be detected, he secretly assumes that denials in response to certain questions -- called "control" questions -- will be less than truthful. An example of a commonly used control question is, "Did you ever lie to get out of trouble?" The polygrapher steers the examinee into a denial by warning, for example, that anyone who would do so is the same kind of person who would commit the kind of behavior that is under investigation and then lie about it. But secretly, it is assumed that everyone has lied to get out of trouble.
The polygraph pens don't do a special dance when a person lies. The polygrapher scores the test by comparing physiological responses (breathing, blood pressure, heart, and perspiration rates) to these probable-lie control questions with reactions to relevant questions such as, "Did you ever commit an act of espionage against the United States?" (commonly asked in security screening). If the former reactions are greater, the examinee passes; if the latter are greater, he fails. If responses to both "control" and relevant questions are about the same, the result is deemed inconclusive.
The test also includes irrelevant questions such as, "Are the lights on in this room?" The polygrapher falsely explains that such questions provide a "baseline for truth," because the true answer is obvious. But in reality, they are not scored at all! They merely serve as buffers between pairs of relevant and "control" questions.
The simplistic methodology used in polygraph testing has no grounding in the scientific method: it is no more scientific than astrology or tarot cards. Government agencies value it because people who don't realize it's a fraud sometimes make damaging admissions. But as a result of reliance on this voodoo science, the truthful are often falsely branded as liars while the deceptive pass through.
Perversely, the "test" is inherently biased against the truthful, because the more honestly one answers the "control" questions, and as a consequence feels less stress when answering them, the more likely one is to fail. Conversely, liars can beat the test by covertly augmenting their physiological reactions to the "control" questions. This can be done, for example, by doing mental arithmetic, thinking exciting thoughts, altering one's breathing pattern, or simply biting the side of the tongue. Truthful persons can also use these techniques to protect themselves against the risk of a false positive outcome. Although polygraphers
Brilliant! (Score:2)
>scientists, since a committee of the National Academy of
>Sciences has declared that, beyond being inadmissible in
>court, there is no scientific basis for polygraphs. In my
>opinion, by agreeing to be polygraphed, one thereby
>seriously jeopardizes his or her claim to being a
>scientist, which is presumably the principal reason for
>employment for many scientists at Los Alamos.'"
I sure hope he tells
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I doubt that he'll stay unemployed long. There are always employers outside the US willing to pay for services. A pleasant thought for nuclear scientists, no doubt :/
-b.
How intereresting if they were 100% acccurate (Score:4, Interesting)
how a 100% accurate polygraph or lie-detector would affect civilization. How it would affect law enforcement
and judiciary. How would it affect business agreements and politics. If a really good lie detector were
readily available, then what would it do to society, government, economies, education, religion...
Its fun to imagine how the world would reshape itself. Would it be good, or a disaster.
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One of the fundamental problems with polygraphs is that there is no such thing as an absolute truth. If one could invent a "100% accurate" polygraph all it would really measure is if the subject believes he or she is telling the truth or not (which is all that current polygraphers claim that it can measure anyways). So, someone that could truly convince themselves that something is true could still fake a pol
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Did you ever watch Babylon 5? (If you didn't: psychics were relatively common and telepathic screening was standard procedure in the corporate world.)
Unionize (Score:4, Interesting)
Quite simply, LANL employees' biggest problem is that we aren't unionized. We stand idly by and watch management (LANS/NNSA/DOE) hammer us again and again and again with policies that decrease the quality of workplace life (without adding jack to the real safety and security of the institution). The "substantially equivalent" requirement for benefits between the last contractor and the current contractor has been revealed to be a stinking pile of bullshit. With a strong collective bargaining agreement, there'd be some pushback against this unrelenting spiral into hell. There is none, however, because nearly everyone in Los Alamos County believes that unions are dues-sucking liberal plots that exist solely to protect the slackers and lackwits. Efforts to unionize have been and will continue to be fruitless. And so, things will get worse.
To specifically address the current outrage, Director Mike Anastasio's plan to expand random drug testing, one can say that it's true that LANL has had far, far too many security and safety incidents over the past decade. But I can't think of a single one in which the cause was traced back to drug use or alcohol overconsumption. This means we'll be spending money that the contractor doesn't have (they're facing a $150M + shortfall this year) to solve a problem that the lab doesn't have, and raping the Fourth Amendment in the process. (Yes, I know the workplace drug laws have been routinely upheld, but when the courts write that some things are too important for Constitutional protections to apply, what're you to think?) THIS is the kind of visionary thinking that made LANS the winning contractor?
/Pee in cups for LANL
//Take polygraphs for LANL
///Hates self for it
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There is not always another job for a nuclear weapons physicist. The US has only 1 nuclear weapons community. I think the root of all this consternation is the resumption of post Cold-War shrinking of the NW complex (after a resurgence under Bush - debatably irrational), making it an employer's market. Research scientists are specialists, so there's a big risk of investing years in a PhD to
You take the paycheck... (Score:2)
Don't like it? Show 'em you mean business and take your talents elsewhere. There are lots of places that need scientific expertise. And just think of all the cool gadgets the old people play with in the country just to the south of your new home.
Interesting reactions (Score:2)
Re:Bad Logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on how you look at it (Score:2)
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That is, of course, the reason most people in such positions accept the insult. It is a game of chicken and usually the individual feels that they have more to lose. But not always.
I have a good friend who holds a handful of clearances. Par
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The reality is that polygraphs are just a mixture of suggestion and stress as measured by a change in dielectric properties. If you are not particularly suggestible, if your stress levels remain constant, or if your physiology is such that the variation in sweat level from stress is
Re:Bad Logic (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no scientific basis for polygraphs. Therefore they fail to meet court standards for admission of evidence. And therefore they are not admissable in court. This guy is formulating what is at least partially a legal argument as well as a scientific and political argument and so it is very relevant for him to point out the complete NAS opinion that polygraphs are not admissable in court, in addition to having no scientific basis. The NAS position he cites specifically says "beyond", not "because of". While the author does use established legal standards to support his argument in a rhetorical sense, he is not relying on them as proof of anything scientific.
I don't know where you divined the information that polygraphs fail to meet court standards for admission of evidence for any reason other than their lack of a scientific basis. Specifically, those standards keep polygraphs out of courtrooms because of their high error rate, as one would expect from a technology built on top of a pseudoscience.
As for the rest of your argument, the choice of whether or not to consent to a stupid polygraph is simply not on par with one's freedom of religion.
Re:Bad Logic (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy's right, by the way. For similar reasons, I've walked off jobs because I refuse to be piss-tested. I don't do drugs, I'm an infrequent drinker, nearest to a chemical vice is drinking too much espresso, but as a matter of principle, it's none of their goddamned business. And I've never gone a day without being employed. The only reason not to stand up to the bastards is cowardice, or the all-American tendency to grovel before any authority, no matter how illegitimate or irrational.
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That doesn't make it reasonable, just an unfortunate fact of life. BTW, drug testing by private employers has actually decreased slightly since the early 1990s, since some have figured out that it costs without helping the bottom line.
-b.
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no one is indispensable.
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I find it very hard to respect anyone who submits to random drug tests.
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Well, because some of us have a mortgage to pay and kids to feed. If I have the choice between pissing in a cup and loosing my job, I will fill that thing every time. In reality for most 25+ there simply is no choice, we have commitments.
Now that doesn't mean that a pointy haired boss' pee fetish, will not have me looking for another job. It probably will, but no way in hell am I going to tell someone to go get stuffed unless next months pay is reasonably secure.
He has a right to be too good for nonsense (Score:2)
He doesn't have to put up with upper management imposing nonsensical practices on their employees. Polygraph testing is just one of those things... I bet they have plenty of others. If you want to have a functional laboratory, or a productive company, or a working research team, then somebody has to fight (every day) to keep the bureaucracy under control. There will always be managers who firmly believe in an extra regulation, an extra test, an extra form, an extra meeting, an extra manager, to make things
Re: (Score:2)
Well, for one thing, a brilliant scientist is less easily replacable than a lowly technician, so you want him to stay with the "company."
-b.
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http://www.sciammind.com/print_version.cfm?article ID=0007F06E-B7AE-1522-B7AE83414B7F0182 [sciammind.com]
I worked with someone who was in one of his experiments. He was instructed to pick two of the many offered topics at random, and speak about each for a few minutes. One he was supposed to lie about, the other to tell the truth. And he wa