Elizabeth Olsen passes polygraph test saying she’s “never met” John Krasinski
Which suggests Olsen is either a pretty good liar, or that Marvel goes to some pretty extreme lengths to keep its secrets
Aux News Elizabeth Olsen
[Note: This article discusses major spoilers for Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness.]
Let’s start with a disclaimer here (after the disclaimer we just started with): Polygraph tests are bullshit. There’s a whole host of academic research that shows, in no uncertain terms, that polygraphs do not “detect lies” with any degree of accuracy, that they’re mostly just used by law enforcement as an intimidation tactic, and that they have absolutely zero place in the investigation of crimes or the determining of a human being’s culpability in anything that matters.
That being said, they are a pretty neat way to make celebrities squirm a little bit.
Vanity Fair proved that again this week, releasing a new “Famous Person X Takes A Lie Detector Test” interview, this time with Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness star Elizabeth Olsen in the proverbial hot seat. (Not to be confused with the time Elizabeth Olsen went on Hot Ones, declaring hilariously that she felt “brave” and “strong” at the end while in a sort of capsaicin-imposed fugue state.)
The result was one of the more interesting interviews we’ve seen Olsen give to date; it’s fascinating to see her thread the question of how much honesty is too much when asked about things like the quality of her high school friend Danielle Haim’s brief performance in Licorice Pizza—one of the only times she gets dinged for outright “lying” by the test administrator—and the apparent drifting apart of her friendship with Chris Evans. (She’s also charmingly unapologetic about her recent efforts to start smoking weed, and kicking her husband Robbie Arnett’s band Milo Greene off of her regular music playlist.)
For the purposes of a pop culture web site, though, the most relevant bit of the interview comes about 10 minutes in, when a picture of John Krasinski is placed in front of Olsen and she’s asked “Do you think this man is the smartest man alive?” After getting over her laughter at the very idea, Olsen makes an interesting claim: “I don’t know him, though… I’ve never met him.”
Which is interesting, in so far as Olsen’s character Wanda Maximoff certainly has met a character played by Krasinski, who, bowing to the inevitabilities of inexplicable fan desires, briefly appears as the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards in Multiverse. The two characters don’t, uh, “interact” for very long, but they certainly do have a scene together.
Which raises one of two possibilities: Either a) Elizabeth Olsen is a pretty good liar (possibly even a professional “say things that aren’t true while pretending to be fake people” person) trying to keep up Marvel’s beloved veil of secrecy, or b) she legitimately has never met Krasinski. The latter is a genuinely fascinating thought; among other things, it raises questions about how late the members of Multiverse’s spoiler-heavy Illuminati were chosen, and then cast, and how heavy the secrecy must have been around those scenes.
None of which Olsen is going to get into while hooked up to a polygraph, mind you. “I’ve never met that man,” she replies consistently, even when it’s noted they’ve been in the same movie. “I’ve never met him. I’ve met his wife.”
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Are people really this unaware that polygraph tests don’t work. They are only about 50% accurate, which makes them literally useless. The fact that we use them in court cases is truly scary.
Sorry, my timeline doesn’t even believe vaccines work. Everyone here definitely thinks polygraphs are foolproof lie detectors.
WOW, and not a sarcastic WOW either! I must be on the same timeline fork you are! If there isn’t another fork soon where the imbeciles all get their own dedicated timeline that ends in following each other off the edge of their flat world, I may not be able to hold it together much longer.
Like how we were told by the current admin, get the vaccine you wont get the virusm how masks stop the spread, how they dont follow their own masking rules etc? In this timeline the left is leading us off the cliff
The administration after biden lied saying you cant get the virus if vaxxed even admitred eventually yeah, vaccine doesnt stop the virus. But hey the lie worked for a bit.
They are not admissible in any US court.Sure, they might get used, but it’s not evidence.
I wouldn’t even give them 50% accurate. Maybe in lab conditions with some pretty strict standards and very simple questions.
All these things do is detect a bunch of physiological reactions, and assume they represent stress. That that stress can be consistently tied to lying. Then reading it is 100% personal interpretation. They don’t detect lying at all. The operator could be imagining things. The reactions recorded could be because some one needs to pee. And we don’t use them in court cases. They don’t meet the Daubert Standard of being generally accepted and rooted in scientific methodology. So they’re inadmissible. Police use them as a manipulation tactic. Because people believe they’re real, a polygraph can be used to pressure a suspect during interrogation. Just tell them the polygraph says they’re lying when you want to get some one to elaborate on a question.Defense attorneys and PR firms use them for press coverage. Hire a polygraph company to produce the result you want, announce the client has “passed”. Make the public think they’re clear. Otherwise they’re not a thing.
If a polygraph were less than 50% accurate, it would by definition also be more than 50% accurate. A 100% inaccurate polygraph would be completely reliable, you’d just have to move the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ labels! [50% accuracy is the least accurate you can be with a binary outcome][Polygraphs are still widely used in US courts; the Supreme Court ruled that there’s no right to present polygraphs in your defence, but it’s up to individual circuits, states and sometimes even judges whether to allow them or not. New Mexico, for example, considers polygraphs admissable if the polygrapher is trained and if they conducted the polygraphy in a way “generally accepted as reliable by polygraph experts”. Even where polygraphs aren’t admissable as direct evidence, they’re still often admissable to support or undermine the evidence offered by a witness. And they’re used extremely extensively by the justice system outside of actual trials, particularly in ascertaining whether people on probation have violated their terms. And yes, this is obviously all completely insane, but US courts ARE completely insane, so…]
I wish I remembered enough statistical analysis to refute this. But I feel that certain systems, particularly analog ones reading biological ones like a polygraph is, can CERTAINLY exceed 50% innacuracy, particularly given they are “read” and don’t have a “true” and “false” readout, so you’re going 100% on bias anyways, not actual binary chance.
I assure you that if something is less than 50% accurate, that it wouldn’t also be by definition more than 50% accurate 🤣🤣🤣… By definition, if it were less than 50% accurate, then it would also be more than 50% inaccurate… You ppl lol me with your faux logic, and you’ll actually have someone read your words and say that makes sense.
Ahh, it’s great seeing that there are people that still exist who actually reply with knowledge and experience as opposed to typing out your personal beliefs and trying to pass that as fact.
“ If a polygraph were less than 50% accurate, it would by definition also be more than 50% accurate. A 100% inaccurate polygraph would be completely reliable, you’d just have to move the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ labels!”
You’re probably kidding, but in case you’re not, I challenge you to find the obvious glaring hole in your argument. Secondly, a suspect cannot be compelled to take a polygraph, and not taking one cannot be used as evidence.
Not like anyone ever has physiological reactions discussing serious or emotional things, has to be a lie!
right, they detect something, and its something that SOME people associate with lying, but to say that it detects lying relies on a lot of super tenuous assumptions.
You’re closer than you know with the pee comment. A common technique taught to pass polygraphs is anal kegels, IE, tighten for truth, relax for lie.
As long as you keep the needles jumping, a baseline is either widely established by the morons that believe it’s a science, or statistically disruptive for those trying to use it as a “cold reading” tool.
“They don’t detect lying at all. The operator could be imagining things. The reactions recorded could be because some one needs to pee.” During one poly I had (IC agencies still routinely use them as part of the clearance process, believe it or not), the investigator/operator indicated that I had reaction to one question and asked what I was thinking about on that question that caused my reaction*. I said perhaps it was the fact that my hand was turning purple because she had secured the blood pressure cuff so tightly. Turns out they don’t like that kind of feedback. Or any critical feedback, really.*This sort of thing is what the poly is really for. There’s a whole interview process before and after that you never really see in dramatic presentations. It’s during that interview process that they try and manipulate information/confession/whatever out of the subject (“You had a reaction, so you must have been thinking about something”).
Edited
Professor Marston and The Wonder Woman didn’t help the situation. The film presents the Lie Detector Test as a revolutionary (and accurate) means of uncovering deception.
Don’t worry. No one saw that movie.
There’s a better presentation of that story, a play, Lasso of Truth by Carson Kreither. Gets into his consternation of not only the lie detector being thoroughly debunked, but also Wonder Woman shifting away from the original “inherently peaceful woman” premise in accordance with different historical mores. That his works have sort of followed the feminist “tilted screw” model, with each success being met by setbacks, followed by incrementally better successes. His work on the lie detector being influenced by Paul Ekman’s more methodically scientific work on deception, for example.
This is the kind of Reply that reminds me what the AVClub used to be. Kudos. I wonder if I’ll be able to find a copy of the play?
11 bucks for a perusal script straight from the publisher, hard copy or pdf. https://www.dramaticpublishing.com/lasso-of-truth
Thanks
Pretty good movie otherwise!
Well of course – that was definitely a widely-seen film that influenced public thinking.
But are the 15 people who saw that motivated and influential enough to sway public opinion on polygraphs?
We don’t use them in court cases. The defense or prosecution can cite one and be instantly struck down with an objection, but as evidence, polygraph tests are inadmissable because of their lack of reality.
Polygraphs are not admissible in court. Yes, they get used in investigations, but given how unreliable they are, they’re never actually entered as evidence.
As others have stated, we don’t use them in court. However, the government has been known to use them in investigations and businesses sometimes do the same. The idea of getting fired based on something with such low reliability is disturbing enough. The one useful thing is that sometimes, the threat of facing the machine will lead guilty parties to confess rather than risk being discovered.
Rephrase that as “businesses often use them”! They have a lot more faith than the Government does in polygraphs, probably because the burden of proof in a business is all but nonexistent and the polygraphs go along with their prejudices.
“I’ve invented a lie detector machine!”“How does it work?”“Well, you know how people get kind of nervous when they lie?”“Yeah?”“Well, I’ve invented a machine that monitors stuff like pulse and blood pressure and such to find out if people are nervous, and therefore lying.”“What if they’re nervous but not lying?”“I…don’t understand. Why would you be nervous if you’re not lying?”“Like if you were hooked up to a machine with a bunch of wires and someone interrogates you to figure out if you’re lying.”“…”“Or what if you’re lying but not nervous? Like, you’re a habitual liar so you’re really used to it, or you’ve rehearsed your lies a bunch, or you just don’t happen to have the same physiological response to lying that most other people do, or…”“…I’ve invented a lie detector machine!”
Or the voice stress tests, which are a verbal form of polygraph that Human Resources Departments will use on people applying for jobs. What they all mostly measure are stress levels, which means they can give
false positives to people who are easily stressed or give negative
readings to people who either have exceptional control over their
involuntary reactions…or by sociopaths who aren’t stressed by their
actions.
The inventor of the “Lie Detector Test”, William Moulton Marston, was also the creator of Wonder Woman, and said her “Magic Lasso” (which compels people to tell the truth) was an analogue for his device. As with a lot of things, Dr. Marston was an odd combination of idealist and eccentric about his “Lie Detector”….
Keep in mind that our “Justice” system isn’t really one, but more a bureaucracy system, that cares more about convictions than innocent verdicts. As a result, you get a lot of bad faith actors and psychopaths running the system to maintain the ‘status quo’. Them using polygraphs would barely hurt the system, despite how obsolete they are.
Funny (sort of) story… a patient once yelled at us because he didn’t “want that lie detector test” done on him.We then calmly explained the purpose of an EKG. He was OK with it after that.
“Are people really this unaware”
Fucking yes!
I remember the sharper image ones….. That were supposed to work over landline, analog amplified telephone. LOL
But… I’ve seen it on Law and Order!
We use them in tv court cases, not real life ones
Well, if they’re used in official court proceedings, then I think you have your answer. People clearly are unaware that polygraph tests don’t work. They are also unaware that thoughts and prayers don’t work; that wishful thinking doesn’t overrule biology; that the moral wrong of forcing one’s beliefs onto those who don’t share those beliefs through legislation doesn’t only apply to religion but also to biology, economics, and climate; that a handmade cloth mask and being 6ft apart isn’t any more effective against a highly contagious airborne virus than a rubber gas mask would be against radiation; that vaccines actually do work; that the earth isn’t flat; that race is a fictional concept, but racism isn’t; that NFTs are a Ponzi scheme; that a fetal heartbeat isn’t a sign of intelligent life; that it’s possible for one to espouse fascist ideas regardless of their side of the political divide; that not only white people can be racist; that free speech is unconditional, but tolerance and acceptance aren’t; that one doesn’t have to unconditionally accept all of the beliefs and dogmas of one of two sociopolitical leanings in order to refer to themselves as liberal or conservative; that Epstein didn’t kill himself, but whoever did is powerful enough to bend the judicial system of the entire country to their will in order to hide the identities of high profile child sex traffickers; that the Supreme Court is a group of unelected politicians who nevertheless wield the power of government despite not even remotely representing the will of the majority; that “a few bad apples” isn’t a valid excuse for police officers any more than it is for heart surgeons or airline pilots; that one political extreme isn’t morally superior to another; that the reason billionaires are a problem isn’t their net worth, but the government’s willingness to let them cheat their way out of paying taxes; that climate change is an existential threat to humanity, which supersedes any other issue by several orders of magnitude and all of our social, political, and economic struggles are meaningless by comparison. There are so many more things that the average person doesn’t seem to be aware of, that it really is amazing we’re still alive.
“that NFTs are a Ponzi scheme”Is this one that you think people get wrong? Because they are, and not a single person is able to elaborate on their worth other than for fleecing morons.
nah, i should have said “not a Ponzi scheme”, because yes, they definitely are.
Well said!
As long as they’re portrayed as 100% accurate in TV crime dramas, the general public will believe it.
People are “unaware that polygraph tests don’t work” in the same way that they’re “unaware” that standard police interrogation procedures are almost perfectly tuned to produce false confessions. In other words, they adopt a pose of being “unaware” so that they can claim to be honest in their emphatic insistence that their preferred technique is fundamentally sound so anyone they want to accuse must absolutely be guilty.
That actually turns out to be a lie. Humans alone can detect lies with 50%-60% accuracy. Lie detector tests aren’t standalone automated machines – it’s a trained human with additional tools and techniques at their disposal. Properly trained and conducted, a lie detector test has at least a 75% accuracy. Even at the high end, though, you’ll still only get 90-95% accuracy, which isn’t enough for a US court of law. Even DNA tests with 99.98% accuracy were initially doubted by the US justice system because the “reasonable doubt” test is a strong one. But, claiming that a lie detector test is somehow worse than a human’s ability to detect lies ignores the fact that these tests *are* humans, just specially trained and with some extra tricks at their disposal.
Yup… polygraph tests are junk-science at best… and a complete scam at worst.
We don’t use them in court. They are inadmissible in law. The defense can use one on their client and say, he/she passed the test, but it can’t be admitted into evidence.
We don’t use them in court, they are not considered admissable evidence because they are so unreliable. However since most people don’t know that some police will still use them as an interrogation tactic.
i thought polygraph results aren’t admissible in court
…or c) these movies are filmed on a green screen and it’s entirely common for people to appear in scenes together without ever having met.
Yeah – I’m fairly certain we’ll discover that none of the Illuminati actors were in the same room with one another.
Yeah, there was certainly some stuff where their eyelines were off, and they were probably looking at something that wasn’t there. I am confident that she is actually telling the truth, and not only that, it is certainly possible that she filmed her half of the scene before he was even hired. The entire film was clearly shot to have as few people standing close to each other as possible.
The eyelines were all over the place in that sequence.
especially a scene like THAT
Yeah, not sure how “green-screens exist” became an article….
It was common even before COVID, but I feel like this writer is forgetting that MoM was one of the first Marvel movies to start filming during tight COVID restrictions.Yeah, it’s fair to say a lot of these actors were not actually filming on set together. It’s not exactly a shocker.
As much as I like No Way Home, the digital compositing is VERY noticeable in a lot of shots.
It’s like the digital stages in Mandalorean and other things. A step forward technologically, but for a few iterations, a step back stylistically while they figure out the happy medium of obsessing over the new ability and actual good storytelling.
It’s one thing if you have a fight with a CGI creature or you’re de-aging Mark Hamill. However, in No Way Home, the compositing got most noticeable for scenes where characters were just standing there talking.
Like the ending (no spoilers), I thought to myself “Wow, Tom Holland and Jon Favreau are totally not there together in that shot.”
Like Mandalorean, where the ensemble cast would be miles away from the “doors” of the city, with the ship landing as an excuse. Like people land hundreds of yards away from the city and have long conversations just outside city walls with any other character hundreds of yards away. Didn’t the MF land in a lil garage/port in the middle of the city in both the originals and more recent projects?
But you can’t do that without a practical set or traditional CGI compositing, and just a digital backdrop.
…or d) that is not elizabeth olsen…but really wanda
Having not read about the production, I’d assumed anyway none of them were in the same room. There was something slightly janky and not entirely seamless about those scenes. Quite a few of the recent Marvel movies seem to lack that “weightiness” and the feeling that the people you are watching are really there.
Why does everyone seem to be ignoring the most plausible explanation?d) after too many spoilers Marvel now performs some sort of brain surgery or “Severance” style chip implant on its actors.
I think this kind of gets knocked as “the actors aren’t even in the SAME ROOM ANYMORE” as a way of saying it’s lesser, but I think the biggest benefit we’ll see with this sort of thing is that they can cast bigger name actors and work around scheduling conflicts now, so it’s a net positive imo.
I mean, the big first back to back team up in a circle in the first Avengers movie was exactly that, all individual filmed and added together after. They have been doing this stuff for a long time
A lie detector would not care about such nuance. A lie detector detects the results that the operator wishes to find.
Reminds me of when Mark Hamill tweet out that he really wants to work with Lupita Nyong’o. Which they’ve been in 2 movies together but never actually worked together. With the lengths they go to keep secrecy I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out everything was filmed separately.
It’s not even just these movies. A lot of movies are made this way with different actors on different schedules! This is not revelatory!
Next you’re going to tell me Tig Notaro never met the cast of Army of the Dead.
This comment is the argument ender.
It could be a Gwyneth Paltrow sort of thing.
Is Gwyn into bondage and stuff? Didn’t know that but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Meaning she doesn’t know half the shit she’s in. She phones it in. Just like the “science” behind anything she sells.
What do vag candles have to do with it?
Everything and nothing….all at the same time.
Or, Polygraph tests are terribly unreliable and its why they aren’t allowed in court because the science is kinda screwy and the lack of consistency is a fatal flaw.
It’s not a lie if you believe it.
Don’t polygraphs, despite being pseudo-science, rely on yes/no answers?
“Which suggests Olsen is either a pretty good liar, or that Marvel goes to some pretty extreme lengths to keep it secret”Or that there’s a good reason polygraph tests aren’t admissable in court.
Their scenes “together” basically consist of them speaking to the camera (we get the front view) and the death scene with is all CGI. It’s not really that hard to imagine they never met. Especially since they filmed during Covid restrictions.Still, polygraphs are not really that reliable, especially on answers tha’ aren’t yes/no and I’m sure Disney made sure that the questions don’t spoil anything.
Or maybe she means it in the way that nobody has ever really met John Krasinski because there’s nothing under the surface there. There’s nothing behind his eyes.
Been saying this for years
Aww that’s not true. He’s a really nice guy.
No one knows what it’s like to be the Kras man…
damn, +10 for the excellent and totally unexpected Who reference
I have spent a few minutes the last 3 days trying to watch The Eternals and I find I couldn’t care less about this. I measured it and it is actually impossible for me to care less.
And this is about a completely different movie, so why should we care?
Because… the Eternals is part of the Marvel brand. It was such a slog to watch -it really didn’t reward the viewer for their money. That permanently damages the Marvel brand. Olsen’s movie is Marvel. SMH
lol what Marvel brand? repetitive, action pieces, juvenile dialog and plot development? At least Eternals had the decency to be like the early MCU movies and focus more on the characters instead of the action and refrained from having every line of dialog be some smarmy witty comment.
You sound fun.Eternals is one of the worst Marvel movies, the characters it focuses on are all badly written.
Thank you.Let’s not pave over what the Marvel movies really are, and try and elevate them to more than that. It is okay to be honest about them. Highly mediocre movies. This does not mean they are not enjoyable or entertaining.Eternals is one of the top Marvel movies, because it breaks away from the monotony that they became from Avengers onward. It gets back to focusing on the characters, their story, and their journey; it also has real writing and not 12-year-old boy level of dialogue and humour. Like the original movies, the director was able to showcase their talent over the Marvel formula, and inject some real filmmaking for a change.
Is a take almost no one would agree with. Boy, Marvel would’ve liked it if audiences and critics thought so, tho!
They’re certainly not the best movies in the world but they’re about 100x better than the generic ‘90s and ‘00s action movies that they’ve generally replaced. ‘Highly mediocre’ describes most of the movies that, say, Netflix makes today. Marvel movies are generally decent, a step or so above mediocre…in my opinion.
“it also has real writing and not 12-year-old boy level of dialogue and humour.”Not really though…? It’s probably the most well shot and worst written movie Marvel has ever done. The characters are boring and the writing barely gets me to care about them at all. The bad guys are super generic CGI blobs. The only thing good about it is that the ending promises a much more interesting second movie.
It’s ok to have a different opinion on that but man I just can’t see how that’s actually the case. Winter Solder, for example, has far better writing than Eternals, in my opinion.
I remember watching Corpse Bride and being bored to tears so I never watched another film again because all films must be boring slogs since they all fall under the umbrella of “movies”
None…none less care.
I counted 3 separate times they discussed off-sceen events that made me say, “I wanna see that film”.
I’m still hung up on Eternals repeatedly needing to stress that DC comics exist in the MCU. Why? Why, movie? Also, in a world where the blip happen for five years and there are alien invasions and literal real life superheroes, is there still a market for Batman or Superman?
It’s pretty but it’s badly written and really drags.
No hyperbole, The Eternals was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.
“Eh, she was deceptive!”
Word now is indeed that Krasinski was a very late addition, and Reed was originally going to be played by Daniel Craig.
Funnily enough, after the initial shock/thrill of seeing Krasinski in this, my first thought was that it didn’t seen like he had a whole lot of time to prepare for this role. For someone playing a stretchy guy, his brief appearance was the most wooden performance I can remember in the MCU. Not saying he can’t play the part, just hoping he can play it better than he did here.
also was this meant to let the world know that Fantastic 4 is officially dead (as it should be)?
This headline is hilarious for being such an obvious spoiler for a week-old film. But the joke’s on you, AV Club! I already had that spoiled for me by a YouTube thumbnail on the homepage, two days before the movie’s Thursday night opening last week. A random bootlegger has beaten you to the punch!
She’s delightful.
Silly me I read this as Ted Kaczynski. Damn, now that might have been an interesting article. This one? Not so much.
I think it’s stunning that someone that writes about movies for the AV Club apparently has so little concept about how movies are made. Do you really think that everyone in the scene of a big budget effect movie is actually all there together at the same time?
Yep, pretty much. But the typical Marvel reviewer is mostly about “hot takes” on “why did character x do this or that” with very little understanding how the nuts and bolts of film production actually works. On the other side of that, I was always impressed with some of the behind the scene footage of the big battle for Endgame, and actually how many of the actors were there all at the same time, when in reality they didn’t need to be.
“Polygraph tests are bullshit” and “How is she beating this polygraph???” in one article. Bravo, boys, you’ve done it again.
“But did you meet Jim from The Office?”“Oh, yeah! He was great. Really nice guy. Kept looking straight into the cameras though.”
Here. She says it all here. Aka it’s because he was just added in later/during reshoots when she wasn’t there.
Sure she did.
They were not on the set at the same time.
She’s never physically met Krasinski…838 Wanda met him.
Hi, I’m a retired person who used to work for DoD / NSA / DHS / CIA and a few other acronyms you’ve never heard of. I held a bunch of clearances, including Top Secret SCI with full-scope poly. The polygraph requirement was one of the reasons I quit: The full-scope polygraph test is unequivocally a form of torture, and one I knew I’d have to repeat (although they won’t tell you how often).I’ll describe mine. The administrator of the test strapped me into a chair that somewhat resembled an old-fashioned wooden electric chair, facing a blank wall. His desk was behind me, and had a bank of monitors that only he could see. There was a clip on each of my fingers, there was a sensor strap around my chest, another strap around my forehead, a strap on each arm, and he had me remove my shoes so that a sensor matt could be placed beneath my feet. He then said “ok sit tight, I’ll be right back.” and proceeded to leave me alone staring at a blank wall for about 20 minutes, wondering if i’d been forgotten about. Mind games, i expect.That’s the thing — the whole setup is designed to be intimidating and unnerving. And in fact you are explicitly forbidden from doing any research — not even so much as a google search — to prepare for the test. I dutifully obeyed that stipulation, but I had some sense that it was more about getting you to incriminate yourself than proving you are telling a lie.But even knowing that going in, you eventually get ground down. The process is long! Mine took hours. Everybody’s human, and it’s surprising how little time it takes to break down a perfectly rational person from “this bad cop BS isn’t gonna get to me” to relatively irrational fear and anxiety and panic, even when you’ve done nothing wrong.I did nothing wrong. I was a nerdy computer programmer with zero ill intent towards the US Government, zero inclination to commit any crime, no addictions, no enemies, no skeletons to speak of. But I was freaking the eff out by the end. My administrator was very good at instilling fear and panic.By the way — I was friends with a guy who worked on the software system that my administrator was looking at on his screens. Over a few beers, he told me a little about it. The sensors and software aren’t completely bogus — they can reliably highlight questions that cause your subject to feel anxiety, and to what degree. But what that anxiety correlates to could be anything! Lying is merely one possible explanation. In my case, what really set me sweating was when this intentionally intimidating person lurking behind me would ask a deeply personal question such as, “Do you consider yourself an honest and trustworthy person?” and then after I answer in the affirmative, there’d be 20 seconds of stone cold silence, and then he’d ask the same question again, but slower.After almost every question he kept telling me I was wiggling my toes too much. I was freaking out about that too, desperate to keep my toes still. I’m naturally a very fidgety person, even when perfectly relaxed, and this was not a relaxing situation. After an hour of this stuff, if he’d informed me that he needed me to stop breathing for the next 15 minutes, I probably would have tried to comply.Anyway, the point is, polygraphs coupled with this kind of mental torture is probably really good at getting people to tell on themselves, and even if they don’t, it still probably gives the test-givers good ideas of what areas to dig into in order to find the juicy stuff. But i suspect these tests are absolutely useless at authoritatively determining whether someone is lying about a particular thing.Also, hey DoD, every IT manager in the field i ever met said they had tons of open slots in programming and IT security. Here’s a notion: maybe literal, ongoing torture as a job requirement is not the best employee recruitment and retention plan? Just a thought!
15+ years ago as a criminal justice student our professors openly discussed how inaccurate and easy to fool these tests were.They have been beyond discredited and it is a genuine crime against the concept of justice that they have ever been allowed in court rooms. They aren’t btw, I long ago forgot when&what context they were declared inadmissible. So they are used to gin up false confessions and for scumbag PR techniques.My gut check “lie detectors are vile propaganda tools” instinct is clashing with, “Elizabeth Olsen might just be a goddess who has descended to this Earth”.
Homicide:Life on the Street had a scene where the interrogator used a loaded copier as a lie detector.
It’s known.
Next you’ll be telling me that Benedict Cumberbatch never met Benedict Cumberbatch even tho they had scenes together.
Of course she lies. She’s an actress. As soon as she says “I’m Wanda” she’s lying.
These polygraph session questions are supposed to be answerable with yes or no responses in order to be “readable’. Elizabeth Olson I don’t think ever responded in a yes or no.
I think she did respond is such a way that I think she was either buzzed or stoned during the session. Either way, she sounds like a lot of fun to talk to.
Meet/Met are the keywords, I dont meet people until I am introduced and had at least a small chat. They didnt ask if she worked with him on the film, so it is possible she and him only “worked” together and did not meet. I have taken a polygraph a few times in the Navy to get/keep clearance – they are only as effective as the questions and the interviewer. I lied twice once with the examiner knowing the truth 100% because he had my file in front of him and he could clearly see I am not over 6 foot 6 inches – I am 6ft barefoot. He just smiled at me. The question was are you taller than 6 and a half feet tall. Answer was Yes, and I passed.
Which suggests Olsen is either a pretty good liar,@VolunteerProofreader, I would definitely have accepted a “Witch suggests…” purposeful typo here.
I think she IS a legit football fan. The one time I met her was at a sports bar on Football Sunday a few years back at Hyperion Public House in Sherman Oaks (now closed). She and her husband were there watching games with the crowd. I think I passed them several times back and forth to the bathroom and like the 4th time (I have a tiny bladder), I only now realize how rude I was because the first thing I said to her wasn’t “Hi Ms. Olson. You’re terrific” or something nice. I literally uttered, “Have you literally been here the whole time?” Despite that, she was very nice anyway and accepted my compliments for taking really cool indy roles (Wind River, the one with Josh Radnor, and the one where she gets out of a cult).
Elizabeth Olsen looks stunning at that premiere.
I love that this comment section seems to be evenly divided between “polygraphs are bullshit” and “green screen is bullshit.” And for once in my life I agree with pretty much everyone. At the risk of being a bit on the nose: no lies detected.
isnt it possible they never met? The way they film shit now, couldnt they film their bits of dialogue seperately and splice em together in a scene?
Ok people, so much ignorance on here about Polygraphs. First, every civilian in the USA who has a top secret clearance must take one to get hired, and get retested for their entire career. Many scientific studies put themnatb75%-to 90+% for employee screening. They are used extensively in the intelligence agencies, and for the most part, work fairly well. The trick is having a highly trained polygrapher giving the test and the person being given the test being relatively normal physically and psychologically. There is a lot of error with some people. The problem with using it for important uses, like employee screening or with criminal cases, is it really needs to be 99.99% accurate, and it’s not. I took many over the years and sometimes it sucks. Got to the point where I was accused of stuff many times that I didn’t do, caused issues. In the long run I passed with some special tests, but it’s not fun. Read some research, if your saying 50% then you know nothing. With all that said, they should NOT be used for employee screening or be admissable in court. I read a a paper comparing methods of detecting deception and comparing them. The Polygraph was still considered the best over all other methods, although still not super accurate. They cited several other studies in the paper with various results on the Polygraph. Definitely far greater than 50% as I mentioned above.
I don’t want to ruin it but polygraph tests don’t work, there is no such thing as knockout gas, people with autism are not super heroes, OCD isn’t funny and the photographic memories do not exist . These are all cheap devices used in fiction that became “common knowledge. I would however belive anything Elizabeth Olsen told me
Had no idea that so many “polygraph accuracy experts” existed until I started reading these comments. Put it this way; If someone very close to you (parents, sibling, spouse) was murdered, and several suspects were given a polygraph, and only one of them failed, would you still feel the same way about their accuracy?
“It’s not a lie, if you belive it.” – George Costanza
You know how good Special Effects are now and she might not of been in any scene with him!
This is stupid.
She was never on set with them. Go to about 4:15 of this video, and she says it again.
Great to lead the article with the spoiler alert, but… maybe don’t include the spoiler in the goddam headline!?
There is additional disclaimer that is needed here:
You cannot pass a polygraph test. It’s fundamentally philosophically impossible to pass a polygraph test.
If you take a polygraph test you either fail or the test is deemed “inconclusive”. If you have an inconclusive polygraph test, that means that your natural variations in heart rate and other lines tested exceeded any meaningful variations associated with questions asked and answers given. So you can’t pass.
This is why you should never ever agree to take a polygraph test. There is no potential benefit to you. You literally can’t win.
John Krazinski was very clearly acting at a tennis ball in this scene so this definitely tracks
We also use them to give out high level government security clearance 🙂