Both involved limited abuse over a short period of time. They pooled findings of a number of polygraph examiners. The alleged perpetrators were attempting to use the polygraph test to prove their innocence. 7 Polygraphs are not absolutely reliable devices. All of these studies have grave weaknesses.
Polygraph tests are inexact and are regarded by some as unreliable.
Studies often are inconclusive because the wrong questions were asked, because the number of individuals is small, etc. Unfortunately, many writers in the field do not differentiate between sudden, triggered memories and memories which are laboriously pieced together in therapy. We have been unable to locate any studies on the relative reliability of the two phenomena. We suspect that most spontanaeously triggered memories are related to real events, whereas memories gradually recovered in RMT are mostly of events that never happened. One source, the Recovered Memory Archive , lists dozens of cases of recovered memories which have been successfully corroborated with independent evidence.