The Politics of the Lie Detector

In his recent quarrel with the U. S. Army over Schine & Cohn, Senator McCarthy suggested that everyone concerned be subjected to a lie detector test. This proposal, which for the time at least has dropped out of political sight, followed upon a similar suggestion by McCarthy during the debate over the confirmation of Charles Bohlen as Ambassador to Russia. Subsequent analysis of this debate by writers of both right and left paid little attention to this curious proposal; most of them treated it as just another amusing vagary of the McCarthy mind. Few mentioned the fact that he had made the same suggestion during the Malmedy investigation or that Richard Nixon, then in the House of Representatives, had proposed the use of the lie detector during the Hiss affair.

The problem here is not whether the lie detector works; for the sake of argument we may assume that it can do everything it is supposed to do. The problem is, Why the lie detector? Or to put it in somewhat academic terms: What does the perceived appropriateness of the use of the machine tell us about certain orientations to the problems of men and society?

The Bohlen affair, despite its rather special setting, typifies a common problem: the evaluation of the fitness of a person for a given post. Yet while men spend a good part of their time consciously or unconsciously evaluating other men, such judgments present constant difficulties. On what grounds should an individual be evaluated? How can one be sure that the criteria one employs are valid?

Some cases pose a minimum of difficulties. Choosing a stenographer is no great problem since the criteria are relatively simple; measurement is not complex; and most important of all, the person making the choice does not have to have any expert knowledge of shorthand and typing.

Contrast this with the problem of choosing a doctor. Medicine is a highly specialized field, and to discriminate intelligently -among doctors would presuppose some knowledge of the field. Granted such knowledge, there is still a vast area of disagreement about what makes one doctor more competent than another. And there is the further difficulty of obtaining reliable information about the various candidates: how many of Dr. Sawbones operations were successful last year? Faced with such problems the layman may prefer to remain ill.

An important difference between these two cases is the degree of uncertainty and risk inherent in each situation. The man choosing a doctor is more uncertain about the correctness of his choice than the man choosing a stenographer. If there is uncertainty in evaluating technical competence, consider the degree of uncertainty bound to be present in trying to evaluate a person’s “moral character” or “loyalty.” Exactly what these terms mean, much less how to measure the qualities they are presumed to signify—does anyone know?

There are at least two polar ways of adaptin...