* swimming test (aka trial by water): throw them chained into water. a witch would stay afloat, an innocent would sink like a stone.
* prayer test: witches cannot speak scriptures aloud, without making mistakes or omissions. but even if you can it was a devil's trick.
* touch test: victims of sorcery would have a special reaction to physical contact with their evildoer
* witch cake: In cases of mysterious illness or possession, witch-hunters would take a sample of the victim’s urine, mix it with rye-meal and ashes and bake it into a cake. This stomach-turning concoction was then fed to a dog—the “familiars,” or animal helpers, of witches, and would spell out the name. It worked with well in Salem, as knowledge of the recipe led to the conviction then.
* witch marks: numb and insensitive to pain. Moles, scars, birthmarks, sores, supernumerary nipples and tattoos could all qualify.
* Pricking and Scratching Tests on these marks.
* Incantations: very similar to a polygraph test
http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/7-bizarre-witch-tr...
They all worked extremely well over hundreds of years.
I think in an ideal world, questions about past use would never be asked and drug tests would be strictly limited to determining if someone is high/drunk on the job. The fundamental problem is employers losing potentially valuable employees due to their unnecessary and invasive drug policies. The polygraph isn't to blame.
When you combine this with government, you have a recipe for "your life is over" workplace weather conditions. Maybe that storm only blows in once every 10 years, and doesn't take many people... so if you're high-functioning, you might not want to join the island where the heroes are fed to the Minotaur when the political climate goes South, sometimes without warning.
You might want to join the place where the worst-case scenario fail condition is a pink slip and a bad blog post. Naturally.
That's the problem I have with them. We can't say, as a society, that something is ok in one scenario, but say it's bullshit when it matters.
Sure we can.
Sometimes carefully crafted bullshit can be ok. For example, when countries conduct diplomacy, or when poker players bluff, or when intelligence agencies need to hire someone and attempt to scare them into telling the truth or trick them into revealing a lie.
The court system is not a place that should tolerate any kind of bullshit (though like most systems, it sadly does to an extent), so it's different.