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She always fails polygraphs?
- Kirsten says that because of her temporal dysplasia, she always fails polygraph tests. How does that work? Polygraphs work by measuring physiological responses that occur when you lie, so if her condition is throwing those responses off, then we should probably be seeing evidence of that in other areas of her life (one of these responses, for instance, is galvanic skin response, or the change in the electrical conductivity of your skin, which is triggered by sweating. Kirsten clearly doesn't sweat any more than the average person). Also, her condition seemingly makes her The Sociopath, which should make it easier for her to pass polygraphs, not harder (sociopaths are well-known for their ability to lie without any physiological indicators at all).
- One possibility is that when asked about events that need to be temporally contextualized, because Kirsten has to rely on external cues to deduce time elapsed, etc. and that requires some mental effort, it "reads" to a polygraph machine like she's under stress and lying, because lying overlaps with that in the sense that it requires a person to think more carefully about their responses and also some mental effort keeping things straight.
- The same brain centers that handle lying also handle creating a story. Since she looks for clues in her memories, any time she has to tell the truth, she is telling a story.
The Lab's lockdown protocols
- For defending against a release of a biohazard they seem very inconsistent and illogical. The ventilation system must surely have spread the airborne flu virus throughout the lab, so locking out the sample room serves no purpose. Then there is the case of Fisher entering the elevator shaft. No hazmat suit? No authentication protocols to ensure only hazmat-qualified or otherwise authorized personnel are entering a locked-down lab? And 90 seconds to suck out the air then refill with halon is coincidentally exactly the time it takes to defeat the mechanism by getting into the elevator car and forcing the inner doors open.
- Yeah, there really is no defending that episode. The Artistic License – Biology is horrible. I don't think they even bothered to explain why the researcher tested her cure on herself.
