American Psychology Profession and Speciality and Its Central Association Completely Disgraced By Independent Report on Complicity in and Abetting of Military Torture

This post was slightly added to July 12, 2015.

Big news today on an issue within the US psychology profession and academic speciality that has been bubbling for quite some time – I posted about some of the brave and persistent activism that has been driving it a few years back, here. It is thus all about the completely disgraceful role of the American Psychological Association (APA) in actively aiding and abetting both the practice itself of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques – retrospectively declared even by the US government itself to be torture – in military and intelligence operations post 9/11, and the actual complicity of professional psychologists in these practices.

In an independent report (online readable here, and downloadable here), specially commissioned by the APA, former federal prosecutor David Hoffman reveals the APA involvement not only to be quite extensive, but also involving outrageous manipulation of internal processes and skewed application of guidelines and regulation of several high ranking APA officers and representatives. One of these, the director of ethics Stephen Behnke, has already been fired. Besides the pointing out of several individuals besides Behnke, whose heads deserve to be set rolling with equal enthusiasm, a central recommendation coming out of the report is that APA should adopt the same policy as the American Medical Association and ban members from participating in military interrogations, and this suggestion is reported to have been quickly picked up by the APA board of directors. Most fitting, and let us all hope that bill carries all the way through. Not least in the light of an independent comment in The Guardian by long-standing anti-torture activist, medical doctor and bioethicist Steve Miles – who among other things run the Doctors Who Torture Accountability Project – that the APA complicity with the US torture policies has been a general impediment for the general fight against torture practices globally. An extensive public apology and list of actions, among these the mentioned ban, has been published by the APA on its website, although it also contains some seemingly desperate attempts to flee responsibility by highlighting some less important findings, e.g., that the motive seems not to have been outright support of the torture program or US policy in this area, but "to curry favors" with the federal government and its agencies. That is: "we only did it for the money and the glory, not at all because we thought it was the right thing to do". As if that would make any difference for the better!

A less partial, extensive and popularised summary of the essentials of the report by New York Times reporter James Risen, who has helped push the uncovering of the heinous APA practices with his book Pay Any Price, can be found here.

Follow our live-streamed symposium: Reconsidering Humanity: Big Data, the Scientific Method, and the Images of Humans

One of the things I do since a number of years is to partake in the multi-disciplinary and cross-sectorial Technology, Institutions and Change working group of the major independent Swedish humanities and social science research funder Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, RJ. This groups is involved in a number of initiatives, among these book projects, research network funding, support of research education and conference-organisation. Within this context, members expose one another to aspects of the group theme, and initiate educational forays by site-visits to relevant research environments. A number of these inspired political scientist Urban Strandberg and me to start pondering some of the more visionary sides of a wave of so-called Big Data approaches which have been flooding both the sciences and the humanities in recent years. In particular, we centred on the most ambitious research visions with regard to areas of scientific and humanities inquiry into the basic aspects of humanity, society and their respective natures, where cross-disciplinary big data approaches have been held out promises of groundbreaking advances on basic challenges, such as bridging the gaps between the subjective and the objective perspectives on human experience, the individual/singular and collective/general aspects of society, and the materialistic and abstract stances of perceiving the essence of human and social nature. To address these visions and perceptions and – let's admit it – hopes and fears, with a simultaneously critical and constructive eye, we ventured to assemble, with the kind support of RJ, a selected multi-disciplinary and qualified assembly of researchers – and to some extent artists – all working in fields related to the grand Big Data visions, with philosophy, computer science, robotics, anthropology and neuroscience as some of the base disciplines.

The result is the symposium:

To make things manageable, we had to make the event invite only, but starting 9:30 CET the entire event will be streamed live on the web, here. More information, the program, abstracts, speaker presentations and more can be accessed here. Later, edited versions of the presentations will be made available as online videos. Please, spread the word! And if you're interested in the subject, don't hesitate to drop in virtually and become part of the flood of big data making up the core of the symposium's subject matter!

The Return of Lombroso? Free Access Article On the Ethics of the Scientific Vision of Screening for Risk of Criminality to Prevent Future Crime

One of my research interests is about the way in which medical science and technology may be used and misused for large-scale societal aims, and how that territory should be understood ethically. In Gothenburg, I am happy to be and have been part of the growing research environment of the Centre for Ethics, Law and Mental Health (CELAM), involving collaboration between forensic psychiatry, criminology, psychology, law, neuromedicine, political and care science, philosophy and ethics. In a freesh article coming out of this collaboration, by myself and CELAM director Susanna Radovic, a family of visionary and currently popular ideas – advocated not least by neurocriminology enthusiast Adrian Raine – about using the science of individual causes of crime for preventive screening programmes are analyzed from an ethical standpoint, connecting to the roots of such visions in the notorious ideas of 19th century Italian criminology pioneer Cesare Lombroso. The abstract runs:

The vision of legendary criminologist Cesare Lombroso to use scientific theories of individual causes of crime as a basis for screening and prevention programmes targeting individuals at risk for future criminal behaviour has resurfaced, following advances in genetics, neuroscience and psychiatric epidemiology. This article analyses this idea and maps its ethical implications from a public health ethical standpoint. Twenty-seven variants of the new Lombrosian vision of forensic screening and prevention are distinguished, and some scientific and technical limitations are noted. Some lures, biases and structural factors, making the application of the Lombrosian idea likely in spite of weak evidence are pointed out and noted as a specific type of ethical aspect. Many classic and complex ethical challenges for health screening programmes are shown to apply to the identified variants and the choice between them, albeit with peculiar and often provoking variations. These variations are shown to actualize an underlying theoretical conundrum in need of further study, pertaining to the relationship between public health ethics and the ethics and values of criminal law policy.

We have been fortunate to possess the funds of making the article so-called open access, meaning that it is now free for viewing and download by anyone – no need for subscription or the payment of any fees.

So if the topic of how medicine, science and technology can be used, for better of for worse, for preventing crime, and what are th ethical implications of such possibilities, feel free to sample our attempt at getting an initial grip on trhis topic, here. And should you want to share it along, or post it on a blog or a forum or in an archive, the open access license permits you to do so, as long as no commercial exploitation is involved.

Another Comment on Empirical Research Relating to Ethics and Morality: The Moral Behavior is not Necessarily so Moral at All

So, once again I have dared to post a small comment on an article in the mighty PLOS ONE open access science journal. Last time, as some of you may recall, it was a piece of psychology research claiming demonstrated predictive links (indeed!) between very particular emotional features and equally very particular types of moral judgements, to which I had some to my mind rather devastating comments based on the authors' apparent lack of insight into elementary ethical theory, quite besides the gap between the conclusion reached and the methodology applied. This time, it is once again psychology, albeit the thesis isn't quite as bold, but still interesting enough to probe. In Does “Science” Make You Moral? The Effects of Priming Science on Moral Judgments and Behavior, Christine Ma-Kellams and Jim Blascovich claim to have demonstrated through a series of experiments that people who think about (yes indeed, merely having in their thoughts) science are more likely to exhibit moral behaviour – the independently supported explanation of this being that science is regularly associated with positive moral features. Also here, however, the argumentation of the article is lacking and, in the end, deeply flawed due to lack of basic competence in ethical theory or moral philosophy. It is also flawed logically, independently of that, due to imprecise concepts being employed in the analysis. My conclusion is that while the study may confirm the rather trivial claim that people who think about moral features will engage more with (perceived) moral features in practical decision making and action, the engagement demonstrated in the studies may very well be immoral from the perspective of the moral features the subjects were aware of and/or engaged with. Read more here.

Hate Crime: Videos on Prevention, Psychology and Policy

So, this connects to a European research project on hate crime policy that I'm in, called When Law and Hate Collide, and that I have been posting about before, here, here and here. I have also linked to video-documented symposia within the project on the topics of perspectives on hate crime (Strasbourg) and the philosophy of hate crime (Gothenburg).

Now, videos are online from the third symposium of this project (a fourth is due to take place in Brussels in January next year) that took place in April this year, in Frankfurt, Germany, organized by our German partners in the project, Michael Fingerle and Caroline Bonnes. The theme of this particular symposium was the prevention and psychology of hate crime. So without further ado, here's some more social science research in the making - welcome to the lab!

David Brax (and Christian Munthe) - The Hate Crime Concept(s): Moral, Legal and Political Considerations

Anneli Svensson: How the LGBTQ Population's Suffering from Hate Crimes and Its Consequences Can Help us Understand the Preventive Work

Marc Coester: Community Crime Prevention in the case of Hate Crimes and Right-Wing Extremism

Edward Dunbar - Community, Forensic, and Clinical Characteristics of Hate Crime Offenders in L.A.

Bastian Finke: MANEO - Berlin's Gay Anti-Violence Project introduces itself

Helmolt Rademacher: Prevention in Schools - Conflict Resolution Education in Germany 

Michael Fingerle (and Caroline Bonnes): Risk - Resilience 

 

Ulrich Wagner - A Meta-Analysis of Prevention Programs

 

Petition Against the Participation of Psychologists in Torture

A Call for Annulment of APA’s PENS Report

(www.ethicalpsychology.org/pens)

Over the decade since the horrendous attacks of 9/11, the world has been shocked by the specter of abusive interrogations and the torture of national security prisoners by agents of the United States government. Although psychologists in the U.S. have made significant contributions to societal welfare on many fronts during this period, the profession tragically has also witnessed psychologists acting as planners, consultants, researchers, and overseers to these abusive interrogations. Moreover, in the guise of keeping interrogations “safe, legal, ethical and effective," psychologists were used to provide legal protection for otherwise illegal treatment of prisoners.

The American Psychological Association’s (APA) 2005 Report of the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (the PENS Report) is the defining document endorsing psychologists’ engagement in detainee interrogations. Despite evidence that psychologists were involved in abusive interrogations, the PENS Task Force concluded that psychologists play a critical role in keeping interrogations “safe, legal, ethical and effective.” With this stance, the APA, the largest association of psychologists worldwide, became the sole major professional healthcare organization to support practices contrary to the international human rights standards that ought to be the benchmark against which professional codes of ethics are judged.

The PENS Report remains highly influential today. Negating efforts by APA members to limit the damages – including passage of an unprecedented member-initiated referendum in 2008 – the Department of Defense continues to disseminate the PENS Report in its instructions to psychologists involved in intelligence operations. The Report also has been adopted, at least informally, as the foundational ethics document for “operational psychology” as an area of specialization involving psychologists in counterintelligence and counterterrorism operations. And the PENS Report is repeatedly cited as a resource for ethical decision-making in the APA Ethics Committee’s new National Security Commentary, a “casebook” for which the APA is currently soliciting feedback.

Equally troubling, the PENS Report was the result of institutional processes that were illegitimate, inconsistent with APA’s own standards, and far outside the norms of transparency, independence, diversity, and deliberation for similar task forces established by professional associations. Deeply problematic aspects include the inherent bias in the Task Force membership (e.g., six of the nine voting members were on the payroll of the U.S. military and/or intelligence agencies, with five having served in chains of command accused of prisoner abuses); significant conflicts of interest (e.g., unacknowledged participants included the spouse of a Guantánamo intelligence psychologist and several high-level lobbyists for Department of Defense and CIA funding for psychologists); irregularities in the report approval process (e.g., the Board’s use of emergency powers that preempted standard review mechanisms); and unwarranted secrecy associated with the Report (e.g., unusual prohibitions on Task Force members’ freedom to discuss the Report). These realities point to the impossibility and inadequacy of merely updating or correcting deficiencies in the PENS Report.

We the undersigned organizations and individuals – health professionals, social scientists, social justice and human rights scholars and activists, and concerned military and intelligence professionals – therefore declare that the PENS Report is illegitimate. We call upon the American Psychological Association to take immediate steps to annul the PENS Report.  At the same time, in our own efforts, we aim to make the illegitimacy of the PENS Report more broadly known within our communities.

(Visit www.ethicalpsychology.org/pens to add your signature)