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You’ve heard of waterboarding used as a means to get suspected terrorists to talk. Some people object to such methods on the grounds that they amount to torture. But in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, psychologist Shane O’Mara of Trinity College in Dublin raises another objection: torture's not likely to work.
Proponents claim that waterboarding's effective because prisoners will tell the truth to make the interrogation stop. But O’Mara says that’s not supported by scientific evidence. Harsh interrogation doesn’t motivate prisoners to tell the truth. It motivates them to talk. Because while they’re talking they’re not being waterboarded. But that doesn’t mean that what they say is true.
What’s more, prolonged extreme stress impairs memory retrieval. American Special Ops soldiers have been shown to have trouble recalling things they’d learned before being subjected to food- or sleep-deprivation as part of their training. That’s because stress hormones can compromise brain activity, especially in regions involved in memory.
O’Mara notes that mildly stressful events actually facilitate recall. So simply capturing, moving and then questioning prisoners, he says, should be stressful enough to get the information flowing.
—Karen Hopkin
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14 Comments
Add CommentI find it unacceptable for any medical person to assist in the torture process by any means, including providing input.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReaders might also be interested in a brief debate between the paper's author and an outside expert here: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/09/torture-cant-pr.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not view this person as providing input to those who participate in the torture process. It seems more to be a study on extreme stress and memory recall. It is applied to torture, because there are very few situations mores stressful than being tortured.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo what, a so-called "scientist" says torture doesn't work? What does he know? It's not like he's a Vice President or something...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomebody tell me again ... why is the current administration unwilling to loudly and explicitly disavow "enhanced interrogation techniques" and "extraordinary rendition" used to hide victims (yes, victims) of torture in other countries? I remain deeply ashamed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe object of all interrogation is to get the subject to talk freely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is up to the interrogator to move the conversation back and forth to discern the truth. Keeping a story straight under stress is very difficult. Trained tough nuts are very hard to crack but once they do start talking they generally can't shut up.
If you have to keep a secret don't talk at all, once you start, for any reason,your done for. Anyone that thinks "enhanced interrogation techniques" do not work has never had it used on them. Just some intelligence from an old Vietnam war vet
pgtruspace...nothing like dangling them by their ankles at 500 feet from the chopper. They talked plenty. The problem was we couldn't understand what they said, so we just dropped them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheers.
Forcing a human trafficing person to be silent with clients differs from forcing prisoners to talk with captors. Both cases could involve litigation using dubious usage of the terms "under duress". There is positive and negative stress. Positive stress helps erase bad memories. Negative stress helps preserve survival information when disinformation on a mass scale appears to be the cause of some perceived threat. Brain functioning and morality differ, but in extreme cases may become frayed and merge among tortured survivors from a forcibly mixed population during war.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne thing is for sure though, the subject isn't going to be saying anything at all until "motivation" is applied. As inhuman and inefficient as it may be, torture is sometimes the only route available to getting the truth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut "truth" is what is at question here, and IS what ever you think it is for the most part. So a person could easily give false information but convince them self they are telling "it as it was". We do this all of the time and under stressful situations what memory becomes very mutable . . during the memory making and during the recall. So effectively any memory in a stressful situation or recalled in one is less reliable (and memory is not really reliable on a good day) . . this all assumes the person wants to give good info! If they do not it only gets worse! Torture can work and get good info but (and a big but) the unreliability on multiple levels seems to make it dubious as a information source. Heck if you torture me I will admit to be a Witch if you want me to, and remember being one if tortured long enough :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeen there , done that, Not really interested in what they wanted to say anyway. We did give them flying lessons, and told them to flap their arms up and down really fast when they stepped out of the chopper, with a small amount of encouragement from the boys. We tried to find out where they came from so as to drop them onto one of the village huts so as to break the high speed decent. Well done and nice to see there are others who have feelings as I do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeen there , done that, Not really interested in what they wanted to say anyway. We did give them flying lessons, and told them to flap their arms up and down really fast when they stepped out of the chopper, with a small amount of encouragement from the boys. We tried to find out where they came from so as to drop them onto one of the village huts so as to break the high speed decent. Well done and nice to see there are others who have feelings as I do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDefending torture is like defending slavery. Even when potentially the economy could justify slavery (in the 1600 to 1800) a lot of people were condemning it from several points of view. The true: the economy does not needs slaves to function, as it has been obvious that torturing people does not help any cause, except causing terror and hate in the "others". People that supported slavery/torture or still supports them today justify them, but they only get pleasure in slavering/torturing other people, just for the sake of it. It's amazing and outrageous that this needs discussion and analysis in USA today, a pity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor a philosophical perspective: http://philosophybites.com/2008/03/raimond-gaita-o.html
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