A comparative study of polygraph tests and other forensic methods

An attempt was made to compare the accuracy of two major polygraph methods, used in criminal investigations by the Israeli police, with other common criminal identification methods such as: fingerprint identification; voice identification; handwriting identification and eyewitness identification. Results indicated that three methods were free of false positive errors; fingerprint identification, the guilty knowledge polygraph test (GKT) and natural handwriting identification. While the more subjective handwriting identification task seemed to be rather easy, fingerprint identification and the GKT are standard and relatively objective procedures that require more expertise. Furthermore, they differ from the handwriting identification procedure by providing control over the probability of false positive errors.