Jun 17, 2007
Psychologists in the Service of the State, and A Skeptical Look at Peer Review
Torture. Alexander Cockburn describes how psychologists have advised on torture.
"In 2002 the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that 'interrogation methods used were no longer effective in obtaining useful information from some detainees' and, as the Inspector General's report details, 'recommended that the Federal Bureau of Investigation Behavioral Science Unit, the Army's Behavioral Science Consultation Team, the Southern Command Psychological Operations Support Element, and the JTF-170 clinical psychologist develop a plan to exploit detainee vulnerabilities.' The use of dogs, sexual humiliation, and kindred tortures were only a couple of months away."
Peer review. Cockburn quotes from David Noble's essay Regression on the Left:
"Such perils of peer review were early detected and condemned by the physicist Albert Einstein, after his arrival in America. Having submitted a co-authored paper to the journal Physical Review, he was dismayed to learn that it had been sent by the editor to an anonymous reviewer. 'We had sent our manuscript for publication and had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it is printed,' an irate Einstein wrote the editor. 'On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere.' Einstein never again contributed to that journal. In Germany he had published in a journal edited by Max Planck, whose editorial philosophy was 'to shun much more the reproach of having suppressed strange opinions than of having been too gentle in evaluating them.'"
"In 2002 the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that 'interrogation methods used were no longer effective in obtaining useful information from some detainees' and, as the Inspector General's report details, 'recommended that the Federal Bureau of Investigation Behavioral Science Unit, the Army's Behavioral Science Consultation Team, the Southern Command Psychological Operations Support Element, and the JTF-170 clinical psychologist develop a plan to exploit detainee vulnerabilities.' The use of dogs, sexual humiliation, and kindred tortures were only a couple of months away."
Peer review. Cockburn quotes from David Noble's essay Regression on the Left:
"Such perils of peer review were early detected and condemned by the physicist Albert Einstein, after his arrival in America. Having submitted a co-authored paper to the journal Physical Review, he was dismayed to learn that it had been sent by the editor to an anonymous reviewer. 'We had sent our manuscript for publication and had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it is printed,' an irate Einstein wrote the editor. 'On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere.' Einstein never again contributed to that journal. In Germany he had published in a journal edited by Max Planck, whose editorial philosophy was 'to shun much more the reproach of having suppressed strange opinions than of having been too gentle in evaluating them.'"