Misconceptions in Martin and Terris's (1991) "Predicting Infrequent Behavior: Clarifying the Impact on False-Positive Rates"

Martin and Terris (1991) recently attributed to a number of psychologists a concept they called the false-positive argument (FPA), according to which a test should not be used if an individual who fails is more likely to be qualified than unqualified, and they attempted to clarify the conditions under which the FPA may be appropriate. We argue that in none of the articles cited by Martin and Terris is the FPA truly posited and also that they failed to clarify the conditions under which the FPA might be appropriate. These conditions depend on the costs and payoffs associated with the various outcomes of the decision problem, as we demonstrate through the use of a threshold utility model. Finally, the examples used by Martin and Terris deal with the detection of deception but were discussed without proper consideration of the contexts in which lie-detection techniques are typically used.