American Psychological Association Hit With New Torture Allegations 83
sciencehabit writes: Did the American Psychological Association (APA) collude with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to enable the torture of detainees in the War on Terror? The answer won't be known until June, when an independent investigation is due to conclude. But at least one thing was made clear in a report from an independent group of psychologists based on e-mail exchanges between APA and CIA officials from 2003 to 2006: The world's largest professional organization for psychologists has maintained a surprisingly cozy relationship with the defense and intelligence community.
Style guide (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
American Psychological Association (2012) style citations please.
References:
American Psychological Association. (2012). APA style guide to electronic references.
Re: (Score:2)
How about this reference http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/r... [apa.org], yet they still train psychologists to work in marketing targeting children. Did the American Psychological Association, play with the torturers and in the most sick fashion imaginable the victims? Was there a buck in it? You betcha, it's the American way, your American dream and fuck their nightmares.
So which is worse damaging the psychology of children to sell products or participating in the psychological torture of suspected terrorists, prett
Re: (Score:2)
And AFAIK it is the most popular one (used across many fields) because of how practical it is.
You forgot the DSM manual. A much better target.
This is a book written by a bean counting bureaucrat that attempts to document a range of disorders, most that exist on a spectrum, and box and label them as if they were discrete. This causes all other small minded authoritarians to be able to wave it around like a bible thinking that they and their label maker can categorise everyone (except themselves) into lit
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing more need be said save to appease the minimum comment requirements imposed by slashdot.
that does it (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
- Samuel Goldwyn
TOM CRUISE WAS RIGHT ABOUT PSYCHLOS! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Never seeing another shrink again as a sign of my protest.
Did the voices tell you to say that?
Last time I checked the APA guide... (Score:2)
Re:Not everyone is a wingnut like the submitter (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be like them going to the AMA and asking what's the most effective way to cut someone up.
Doctors are meant to heal not inflict damage. It's attitudes like yours that does the most damage to society.
Re: (Score:2)
What on earth are you talking about? It's a "wingnut" position that the professional organization for psychologists probably shouldn't be advising the government on torture techniques? Please explain your logic.
Re: (Score:2)
"Surprisingly cozy relationship" my ass. This is what real work is like, you advise people who do things. The fact that you don't like them after the fact is an irrelevancy.
You wave your bias way too openly to be taken seriously. Then again, this is pretty much the wingnut witch hunt site nowadays. Sanity is not easily to be found.
When i was serving in the Greek special forces (as a conscript*) we had this "what to do and what you will suffer if you are taken prisoners by the enemy" training, which in reality, if the roles were changed, could be used as a "what to do to the enemy if you take them prisoners and want them to give info" - i am sure (and know for a fact actualy) that among the psychologists helping directly/indirectly with this training existed many who opposed any (physical/psychological) turture.
I understand already t
Re: (Score:2)
lol, greece. Your military still has the mentality of a '70s tinpot dictatorship and you'd roll over in 5 minutes if attacked. Your opinion is irrelevant.
And your opinion is worth .... ?
Not that surprising.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
More likely they worked together to develop various psychological models that had nothing to do with torture, but could easily be applied to them. They could also have been working together to answer the question "Where is the line in the sand between interrogation and torture?" This would be important to the APA as well, as they have very specific rules about what kind of experiments can be run by their members. Defining that border area by consulting with a group that doesn't have their restrictions wo
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah; I never said it was a good thing; just exploring possible reasoning for doing it.
However, in this case it would be more like "we called up some German doctors" -- knowing that there was a strong likelihood they had Nazi ties, but focusing on their shared research instead of actively searching out those who are outside their ethical boundaries.
Slippery slopes, and all that.
Re: (Score:2)
We know where the line is based on the torture techniques we use and continue to approved of; they include simulated drowning, pain, sleep deprivation, isolation, and starvation or malnutrition. Some or all of these are things we prosecute as war crimes except when we do it.
long history (Score:2)
The APA has been collaborating with the military for a long time.
I suspect the first large scale collaboration between the APA and the military started with Robert Yerkes back in World War I. Back then the controversy was eugenics (more specifically to justify the popular idea of the mental inferiority of and second wave European immigrants and African Americans).
Apparently, this time it was to attempt to assess enhanced torture methods in use for "safety, efficacy, and health impacts".
Somehow, it never se
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Leaping to assumptions (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a member of several professional associations, including IEEE and the ACM. These societies have codes of ethics, which mandate things like respecting data privacy, accepting and cooperating with professional review, honoring contracts, respecting the rights of system stakeholders, providing honest estimates of project costs, disclosing conflicts of interest etc.
It's mostly stuff that almost goes without saying, so I have say I don't think much about these codes. But I sure would be pissed if one of these organizations was involved in helping the government violate its own code of ethics.
APA has a code of ethics for its members. Getting information out of an unwilling subject technically violates several principles the APA expects its own membership to abide by. For example the code of ethics requires APA members to safeguard the rights of anyone they're involved with professionally, and in particular those in situations where the subject's autonomy is limited. This would clearly forbid an APA member to be involved in the development of *any* coercive method, even if that method falls short of the legal definition of "torture".
Now arguably APAs code of ethics is too restrictive; arguably psychologists should be able to develop coercive methods so long as those methods are in the interest of society and do not rise to a reasonable standard of "torture". But until the APA rewrites its code of ethics it should refrain from any action which arguably might violate that code. To do otherwise, particularly secretly is morally repugnant for a dues-supported membership organization. It may even be malfeasance, since a non-profit is supposedly bound by the purpose for which it is chartered in its spending decisions.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As we always said in college (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I say psychologists can't take a joke and mod down jokers as trolls. Or perhaps they're all just mad.
Trends (Score:2)
Water boarding is not torture! (Score:1)
It's truth seeking therapy.
It's true (Score:5, Funny)
Their science isn't reproducable, so... (Score:2)
...is asking them for an opinion really meaningful?
Not surprising at all.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in Canada, the CIA funded Dr. Ewan Cameron's [wikipedia.org] "psychic driving" experiments under the MKULTRA [wikipedia.org] program.
Dr. Cameron was also the head of both the American and World Psychiatric associations.
"Patients" were given treatments such as electroshock, LSD, drug-induced comas, etc., although many of the patients were there for anxiety or depression and did not consent to these types of treatments. Cameron essentially turned his patients into vegetables who suffered from amnesia and forgot how to talk or dress themselves. Some did not remember family members and forgot how to use the bathroom by themselves.
Many of the surviving victims were eventually given small financial settlements [www.cbc.ca], and the Canadian government and CIA were essentially absolved of any wrong doing as a result.
The Fifth Estate productions produced an excellent movie based on Dr. Cameron and his experiments, entitled The Sleep Room" [imdb.com].
You can watch it online here [youtube.com].
In Their Defense (Score:5, Insightful)
Real doctors take an oath to do no harm with the knowledge they've been granted. I guess that's why the CIA went with psychologists.
Re: (Score:2)
time to review your Hippocratic oath, bro-hans... (Score:1)
Unfair rap? (Score:3)
DO we blame plier manufacturers for their roles in torture? What is the difference between a physical tool and a psychological one?
Re:Unfair rap? (Score:5, Insightful)
DO we blame plier manufacturers for their roles in torture? What is the difference between a physical tool and a psychological one?
Unless there's a new ISO standard for ripping apart fingers and testicles for plier manufacturers, I'd say premeditation has a hell of a lot to do with the difference.
Re: (Score:1)
Don't give them ideas! Certain parts of my anatomy hurt just thinking about it.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm having a hard time seeing the problem (Score:1, Troll)
yes, torture is wrong... However, if I am interrogating someone, I not inherently torturing them. What is more, if I use a psychologist to help me interrogate people better, I am further not torturing someone.
Look, the DoD funds a lot of scientific research in the US. Robotics, physics, computer science, atomic physics, biological research, medicine, etc.
Why is it right for all those scientists to help the DoD but not psychologists? If a psychologist knows how to break a hardened terrorist in a shorter amou
Re: (Score:2)
The notion that interrogation has no value is asinine. I'm going to just stop there because it was so stupid I don't know where to go from here.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It is a matter of ethics, not political ideology (though I do loathe the neocons and whatever the Democrats have been turning into in the last 40 years). Torture doesn't work, the CIA should know this. They tortured anyway. Why? Because they were permitted/encouraged to do so. There may be a somewhat blurry line between interrogation and torture, but that line was very clearly crossed numerous times and those who performed, allowed, and authorised it should be made to face criminal charges. If you're not an
Re: (Score:2)
As to ethics, I'd like that explained.
As to torture not working, it depends on what you mean. Simply hurting someone until they tell you what you want to know does not work. This has been known for thousands of years actually.
However, interrogation often uses things that look like torture but have a different objective.
Lets go over this systematically.
The two things an interrogator has to deal with is people that won't talk to him and people that lie. Those are the two things you need to eliminate to do you
Re: (Score:2)
is your definition of that due to your political positions or is it a moral absolute?
Actually, it's pretty easy to decide if something is a moral absolute or not: If it's OK for everyone to do it then you can, if it's not OK for everyone to do it, then you Kant.
Re: (Score:1)
You see, you sounded rational until you said the following: "...how to break a hardened terrorist in a shorter amount of time without inflicting lasting harm ..."
So many things wrong with this it's difficult to know where to start. In no particular order, and with no statements as to completeness:
1). Physicians swear an oath that is normally summarized as, "First of all, do no harm." There's a reason why medicine keeps it's distance from outfits like the Three Letter Agencies, who employ both a flexible
Re: (Score:2)
1. And yet marines are taught where to stab a knife to cause the most harm. Where do you think they learned that? At some point, some battle hardened army surgeon provided his medical opinion for a hand to hand combat training manual.
Pretending that this hasn't been going on since always is naive.
That oath you're talking about goes back to ancient times. Do you think that the doctors in the triage tents of the Roman legion wouldn't be happy to tell a Centurion how best to kill a man?
Your interpretation of t
Re: (Score:2)
First, your belief that the oath to do no harm stops doctors from providing assistance to the military is adorable. Doctors are broadly consulted all the time to figure out how to do harm. At most you might have to offer them a little bit of a bonus. But really most of the doctors you'd query for something like that are going to be open to the idea. Your notion that doctors all belong to some sort of holy religious order is laughable.
Second, the knowledge to kill being offered is quite anatomically specific
A national shame (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that nobody went to jail for US waterboarding is disturbing.
The US had used allegations of waterboarding against Japanese decision makers in the post WWII war-crimes trials to sentence them. Although, it should be noted that it was typically one of multiple torture allegations.
http://www.politifact.com/virg... [politifact.com]
We are filthy hypocrites. Somebody(s) should be locked up a good long time.
Re: (Score:2)
We are filthy hypocrites. Somebody(s) should be locked up a good long time.
And they will, once we find that cadet who architected the whole scheme.
Re:A national shame (Score:5, Informative)
Huge Problem (Score:2)