Gordon H. Barland

Gordon H. Barland, Ph.D., earned his master's and doctoral degrees from the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah, where both his master's and doctoral research focused on the accuracy of the polygraph. He graduated with honors from the federal polygraph school which was the forerunner of the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute. For fourteen years (1986 through 2000) Dr. Barland worked at the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute (DoDPI), where he taught countermeasures, conducted research, and provided operational support to various federal agencies. He also served annual two week tours of active duty with the polygraph office of the Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) prior to his retirement as a Lt. Colonel from the Army Reserve. He has examined hundreds of criminal suspects at the request of defense attorneys, police agencies, and prosecutors.

Dr. Barland's most influential contributions to polygraph science came through his pioneering field validity studies conducted with David C. Raskin. Their 1975 study "An evaluation of field techniques in detection of deception" was published in Psychophysiology and evaluated field techniques using a mock crime situation with 36 "guilty" and 36 "innocent" subjects in a zone comparison control-question polygraph examination. His landmark 1976 report "Validity and Reliability of Polygraph Examinations of Criminal Suspects" (Report No. 76-1) was funded by the National Institute of Justice and became one of the most frequently cited validation studies in polygraph literature. Dr. Barland's research on counterintelligence screening was also significant—his validation studies of the Counterintelligence Screening Test (CIST) in 1981 and 1985 helped establish protocols for security screening examinations. His 1989 study with Honts and Barger on "Studies of the Accuracy of Security Screening Polygraph Examinations" represented the largest research effort on polygraph screening at that time.

Based upon his research, he developed a 40 hour course on polygraph countermeasures and how to detect them, and prior to his retirement from DoDPI, he was the Federal Government's primary authority on polygraph countermeasures. Dr. Barland taught psychology and physiology at numerous polygraph schools, including DoDPI, the Backster School of Lie Detection, the University of Houston polygraph course, the Southwest School of Polygraph, and the Canadian Police College in Ottawa, and has presented polygraph instruction at the FBI Academy, CIA, National Security Agency, U.S. Secret Service, and for the Mexican Government. He has testified as an expert witness in over thirty state, federal and military courts. His work with David C. Raskin established them as one of the most influential research partnerships in the field during the 1970s and 1980s, with their research cited extensively in a polygraph bibliography that listed some 3,400 references.

He has published numerous articles in professional and scientific journals, and authored or co-authored two chapters in books on the polygraph. After retiring from DoDPI in 2000, he became an adjunct faculty member of the DoD Polygraph Institute and of the University of Virginia, and established a private practice in Salt Lake City, Utah specializing in polygraph examinations.