What if one of the paired witnesses is honestly mistaken?
Where one party is truthful and correct as to the facts, and the other is honestly mistaken, the result will be applied against one or the other with a frequency equal to the polygraphist’s individual error rate. The statistical protection that paired testing affords the truthful party is therefore reduced to the extent of the possibility that witnesses could be honestly mistaken. Judges should exercise their discretion to deny requests for paired testing based on their assessment of how likely witnesses are to be honestly mistaken about a disputed fact.
