I knew a professional polygraph examiner who told me the exact same thing.
It means that the polygraph works as well, and in the same way, as the ancient Roman(?) method of having a tent sealed off from light, with a donkey in it. The examinee is told that he is to hold the tail of the donkey and if the donkey brays while he says the thing he's being tested for, then they know for a fact that he's lying.
The actual test, though, was that the donkey's tail was covered in soot. If the examinee comes out of the tent with clean hands, they know that he didn't hold the tail and so is deemed to be untruthful.
Sounds like the premise then is that everybody has got some shit they are hiding but it’s better to employ a criminal than a lier.
Which would mean that the polygraph is really good at filtering out genuinely good people from the recruitment process (in the case of this article people whose actually never done drugs or talked shit about their superiors).
It means that the polygraph works as well, and in the same way, as the ancient Roman(?) method of having a tent sealed off from light, with a donkey in it. The examinee is told that he is to hold the tail of the donkey and if the donkey brays while he says the thing he's being tested for, then they know for a fact that he's lying.
The actual test, though, was that the donkey's tail was covered in soot. If the examinee comes out of the tent with clean hands, they know that he didn't hold the tail and so is deemed to be untruthful.