The head of a federal agency was reportedly given a polygraph test after an apparent news leak — even though such "lie detection" measures are considered junk science.

As Politico reports, a lie detector test was administered to Cameron Hamilton, the acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), after details of a meeting he'd had with Homeland Security director Kirsti Noem were leaked to the press.

In a private March 25 meeting alongside Donald Trump adviser and accused sex pest Corey Lewandowski, Noem told Hamilton that she wanted to shrink FEMA and give it less federal grant money, instead moving its emergency management duties to states. Notably, she'd made similar comments during a televised Cabinet meeting just a day prior, when claiming to the world that the Trump administration is going to "eliminate FEMA."

Soon after that private tête-à-tête, details about Noem's plan were reported by Politico and CNN — and the Homeland Security head was demonstrably peeved. The department confirmed in a statement to Politico that the test had taken place — and said it had cleared the interim FEMA head.

"Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS is unapologetic about its efforts to root out leakers that undermine national security," a HomeSec spokesperson told Politico. "We are agnostic about your standing, tenure, political appointment or status as a career civil servant — we will track down leakers and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law."

Stridency notwithstanding, however, it's hard to imagine anyone being prosecuted based on the results, because polygraph results themselves are generally not admissible in court due to the bunk nature of the "science" behind them.

As Harvard's Countway Library explains, polygraph tests were not invented to detect lies. Rather, they were created by British physician James Mackenzie at the turn of the 20th century to monitor a patient's heartbeat.

"Although the polygraph is known colloquially as a lie detector, that isn't exactly what it does," the library's explainer noted. "The machine detects changes in bodily function that indicate stress, which could be a result of lying. This includes functions like breathing, heart rate, and perspiration — all of which are also important baseline health measurements."

The American Psychological Association put it even more plainly way back in 2004: "so-called 'lie detection' involves inferring deception through analysis of physiological responses to a structured, but unstandardized, series of questions."

As the logic goes, one's heart rate increases when they're lying, leading to heavier breathing and perspiration. But those reactions can also be induced by the mere act of being questioned, which is why the state of New York ruled that polygraph tests are inadmissible court evidence in 1938 and nearly half the other states followed suit.

On the flip side, it's not that difficult — especially for people who lack a conscience or moral compass, which is otherwise known as sociopathy — to "trick" a polygraph by remaining calm when answering questions while hooked up to one, actual truthfullness of their claims notwithstanding.

For now, FEMA and the acting director who runs it seem to be safe. But Trump and his party have long had it out for the agency — and "passing" a shoddy lie detector test won't save Hamilton when his time comes.

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