On Fri, 10 Jul 2015 13:57:07 -0700, Claudia Stanny wrote:
I just finished scanning it . . . not pretty.
The executive summary (supposed to be comparable to an
abstract) runs about 72 pages but the critical information starts
at about page 9. There is no simple way to summarize all of
the findings, in part because not everyone -- including some
prominent psychologists -- were not fully cooperative, thus,
restricting the information available for conclusions.
However, this quote might capture the main points:
| One of the leading principles of the APA Ethics Code
|tells psychologists to "do no harm." But sometimes psychologists
|engage in legitimate acts that cause anxiety in a patient, or
|contribute to negative lawful consequences for a criminal
|defendant or employee if their client is a law enforcement
|agency or a company.
|
| Our review has involved a very different situation-a psychologist
|using his or her special skill to intentionally cause psychological
|(or physical) pain or harm to an individual who is not the psychologist's
|client, who is in custody, and who is outside the protection of the
|criminal justice system.
|
| By explicitly declaring it ethical for psychologists to be involved
|in interrogations of detainees in DoD or CIA custody, while not
|setting strict and explicit limits on a psychologist's involvement
|in the intentional infliction of psychological or physical pain in
|these situations, APA officials were intentionally setting up loose
|and porous constraints, not tight ones, on this particular use of a
|psychologist's skill. This was especially true in the context of the
|time, which included (i) the government's known legal contortions
|that sliced the definition of torture down to a fragment, (ii) the
|widespread and credible claims that this kind of abuse had occurred,
|and (iii) the existence of a large loophole in the Ethics Code that
|allowed CIA and DoD psychologists to follow explicitly unethical
|orders and still be considered ethical as long as they tried to
"resolve"
|the conflict.
|
| Adding to this system of porous constraints was the "third-party
|beneficience" rationalization articulated by psychologists ranging
|from Jim Mitchell to Gerald Koocher, which posited that harm to
|one individual (a detainee) must be weighed against the benefits to
|third parties (the public) that would result if, for instance,
information
|from the detainee stopped a terrorist attack. Those taking this
position
|would argue that strict ethical constraints on psychologists in this
|situation would therefore be inappropriate. But even if, for the sake
of
|argument, one accepts the legitimacy of this subjective harm-balancing
|rationale, it is notable that no limits whatsoever were placed on it,
|meaning that it provided another gaping hole in the already porous
|wall of ethical and legal constraints that might have prohibited
intentional
|harm to detainees.
(page 84 in the PDF; numbered page 70 in the text)
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 3:33 PM, Mike Palij <[email protected]> wrote:
Remember when the APA said that it hired a lawyer to investigate
its role in the CIA's "interrogation" program? Well, he issued his
report and it doesn't look good. The NY Time has an article on
the report as well as a link to the report; see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/us/psychologists-shielded-us-torture-program-report-finds.html?_r=0
and
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/09/us/document-report.html
The report is 542 pages long, so if you had nothing to do this
weekend,
you're in luck: you've a lot of reading to do. Don't expect a happy
ending.
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