Television has done more to popularise polygraph than the entire profession combined, and more to distort public understanding of it. Having worked on productions in the United States and the United Kingdom, here is a fair accounting of both.
What Broadcast Gets Right
On properly run productions, the examination itself is real. The instrument is professional equipment, the examiner is licensed, the questions are constructed to methodological standards and the charts are scored the same way as they would be for an attorney. My participation is conditional on this. Any producer who wants a predetermined outcome is looking for a different examiner.
What Gets Compressed
Everything around the test. A broadcast segment typically shows a few minutes of examination. The genuine pre-test interview alone runs far longer, and the counselling and deliberation that should surround a life-altering result do not fit in a running order. Viewers see the moment of revelation without the structure that makes it survivable.
Where Viewers Are Misled
- Certainty. Format demands a clean answer. Real examinations sometimes return inconclusive results, and that outcome does not make an episode.
- Multiple issues. Drama benefits from many questions; accuracy is highest with one. Well-run productions constrain this. Badly run ones do not.
- Consent under pressure. Someone agreeing to test in front of an audience is not in the same position as someone walking into an office. Ethical production requires real, private, revocable consent.
- The machine as protagonist. Camera language puts the drama in the needles. The work is in the questions.
The Relationship Formats
The UK series covered by The Sun, in which couples were tested on fidelity and intimacy, produced results that genuinely surprised both partners — frequently in the direction of vindication rather than exposure. That is worth noting, because the popular assumption is that these formats exist to catch people. In practice a substantial proportion of participants leave with their account confirmed.
Advice to Producers
Keep the pre-test interview intact even when it cannot be shown. Constrain the test to a single issue. Have qualified aftercare on site, not on call. Show inconclusive results when they occur. Every one of these choices makes better television, because an examination the audience can trust is the only thing that gives the moment weight.
Need Help With This?
- Television & media enquiries — with Dan Ribacoff
- Offices in New York City, Long Island, Westchester, Boca Raton FL and London
- Request a confidential consultation · All services
- External: Daniel Ribacoff on IMDb
Dan Ribacoff is a licensed private investigator and the founder of International Investigative Group, a certified polygraph examiner, certified firearms instructor, GIA Graduate Gemologist and the author of I, Spy: How to Be Your Own Private Investigator. He works from offices in New York, Boca Raton and London, and has appeared as a polygraph expert on American and British television.