Citation

O'Mara S. QJM 2018; 111(2): 73-78.

Affiliation

Professor of Experimental Brain Research and Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator, Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College, Dublin, D02 PN40, Ireland, www.shaneomara.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/qjmed/hcx252

PMID

29319805

Abstract

Despite it being abhorrent and illegal, torture is sometimes employed for information gathering. However, the extreme stressors employed during torture force the brain away from the relatively narrow, adaptive range of function it operates within. Torture degrades signal-to-noise ratios of information yield, and increases false positive discovery rates. As a discovery methodology, torture fails basic tests of veridical, reliable, and replicable information discovery. Torture fails during interrogation because it is an assault on our core integrated, social, psychological, and neural functioning. There is a need for a profound cultural shift regarding torture, recognising that torture impairs, rather than facilitates, investigations and truth-finding. Rising to this challenge will increase operational effectiveness, eliminate prisoner abuse and torment, and aid veridical and actionable information gathering. Policy regarding prisoner and detainee interrogation need to be refocused as a behavioral and brain sciences problem, and not simply treated as a legal, ethical or philosophical problem. Getting the science, ethics and practice in line is a challenge, but it can and should be done.

© The Author 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Physicians. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Language: en