Don’t Be Impressed By Polygraph Results of Wendy Yow Ellis

Times-Picayune staff writer Kate Moran reports regarding a former prostitute’s allegations of a months-long affair with U.S. Senator David Vitter (R-LA):

Weeks after U.S. Sen. David Vitter tried to discredit her allegations, a woman who used to work as a prostitute in New Orleans passed a lie detector test averring that she had a “sexual relationship” with Vitter that lasted at least four months.

Magazine publisher Larry Flynt paid for the woman to take the polygraph test, and he plans to hold a news conference with her at his Beverly Hills office today to unveil the results and challenge the senator to submit to a polygraph.

The woman, Wendy Yow Ellis, claims that she had intercourse with Vitter in a French Quarter apartment at Dauphine and Dumaine streets in 1999, the year the Metairie Republican was elected to Congress.

Ellis, whose maiden name is Wendy Yow, said Monday that she took the polygraph test because Vitter tried to impugn her credibility at a news conference in July, when he denied news reports about his involvement with prostitutes in New Orleans without being specific.

“I have been called a liar all of my life,” Ellis said. “This is one time that you can’t call me a liar. I have admitted my wrongs. I am not proud of myself for my past, but my integrity and my self-respect mean more to me today than anything.”

Flynt paid for Ellis to fly to California to take the polygraph, which was administered by Edward Gelb, a past president of the American Polygraph Association who also gave lie detector tests to the parents of JonBenet Ramsey, the child beauty queen who was found murdered in her family’s basement in 1996.

While I make no claims regarding the truth or falsity of Wendy Yow Ellis’s claims about Senator Vitter, the results of a polygraph test are proof of nothing. Polygraph testing has no scientific basis and is easily manipulated through the use of simple countermeasures that are easily learned and readily available via the Internet. See AntiPolygraph.org’s free e-book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, (1 mb PDF) for detailed information on how anyone — truthful or otherwise — can pass the polygraph.

Also worth noting, although all polygraph testing is pseudoscience to begin with, the polygrapher who conducted the test in this case has a further ethical cloud hanging over his head. American Polygraph Association past president Edward I. Gelb is a phony Ph.D. (And the American Polygraph Association doesn’t consider his masquerading as a Ph.D. to be a violation of its ethical standards.)

In short, the allegations against Sen. Vitter should be assessed base on their merits, and not on the results of a bogus procedure that is wrongly called a test.