Editorial: Polygraphs have no merit in ethics probe

Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2000 | 9:54 a.m.

Gene Smith, a former Clark County government employee, has lodged some stunning allegations against County Commissioner Erin Kenny. Smith, who earlier was fired for having a washer and dryer in his home that once belonged to a county facility, claims that Kenny urged him and another employee to break into the County Government Center to find records about a fellow commissioner. Kenny has vigorously denied Smith's allegations, so earlier this month Smith agreed to take a polygraph test arranged for by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Despite the hullabaloo created by the newspaper over the test, the results came back inconclusive. Later Kenny, as part of her rebuttal to allegations made to the state Ethics Commission, responded that a polygraph test she took showed she did nothing wrong.

This tit-for-tat exchange on polygraph tests is such a waste of time. Polygraphs more accurately should be called "sweat-detector tests," since con artists have been known to beat them. For that matter, innocent people can unfairly be caught in the polygraph's snare, with the test sometimes showing them to be lying when all they're guilty of is being nervous. The Ethics Commission then should sift through facts, not pseudo-science, to get to the truth.