Citation

Donnelly SC. QJM 2018; 111(2): 71.

Affiliation

Editor, QJM.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/qjmed/hcy015

PMID

29462469

Abstract

Philosophically, the utilitarian view of torture is that is justified on the basis that the suffering of the few is outweighed by the needs of the many. Conversely, the Kantian position is that it is morally wrong and can never be justified. If the primary role of torture is to extract information—what if—its just not very good at doing that?

In a review by Professor O’Mara, an eminent neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin, he analyses the scientific evidence of whether torture works. He examines scientifically the claim that imposing extreme stressor states on individuals facilitates the retrieval of voluntarily withheld information.

After forensic analysis, he concludes torture substantially degrades signal-to-noise ratios of information yield and substantially increases false positive discovery rates. In...

Language: en