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Marc Koralnik
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WHY TORTURE DOESN'T WORK.

Shane O'Mara

The Neuroscience of Interrogation

Besides being cruel and inhumane, torture does not work the way torturers assume it does. As Shane O'Mara's account of the neuroscience of suffering reveals, extreme stress creates profound problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable, or even counterproductive and dangerous.
Torture is banned because it is cruel and inhumane. But as Shane O'Mara writes in this account of the human brain under stress, another reason torture should never be condoned is because it does not work the way torturers assume it does. In countless films and TV shows such as Homeland and 24, torture is portrayed as a harsh necessity. If cruelty can extract secrets that will save lives, so be it. CIA officers and others conducted torture using precisely this justification. But does torture accomplish what its defenders say it does? For ethical reasons, there are no scientific studies of torture. But neuroscientists know a lot about how the brain reacts to fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, and immersion in freezing water, all tools of the torturer's trade. These stressors create problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable—and, for intelligence purposes, even counterproductive. As O'Mara guides us through the neuroscience of suffering, he reveals the brain to be much more complex than the brute calculations of torturers have allowed, and he points the way to a humane approach to interrogation, founded in the science of brain and behavior. Torture may be effective in forcing confessions, as in Stalin's Russia. But if we want information that we can depend on to save lives, O'Mara writes, our model should be Napoleon: “It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.” Shane O'Mara is Professor of Experimental Brain Research at Trinity College, University of Dublin, and Director of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience.
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Published 2015-11-01 by Harvard University Press

Comments

“If the aim of the torturers is to extract information, they should read O'Mara's book and adopt gentler methods. CIA and the rest of you, read and note. Neuroscience says your methods don't work.”—Steven Rose, Times Higher Education

Review Times Higher Education

“An authoritative analysis.”—Antoinette Brinkman, Library Journal

Review Library Journal

“Instead of simply providing utilitarian arguments, [O'Mara] argues that there is no evidence from psychology or neuroscience for many of the specious justifications of torture as an information-gathering tool. Providing an abundance of gruesome detail, O'Mara marshals vast, useful information about the effects of such practices on the brain and the body.”—Lasana T. Harris, Nature

Review Nature

“O'Mara has written a sober, convincing argument that torture is practically worthless and morally disgraceful.”—Publishers Weekly

Review Publishers Weekly

“Does torture actually work? To be sure, it can compel people to confess to crimes and to repudiate their religious and political beliefs. But there is a world of difference between compelling someone to speak and compelling them to tell the truth Yet the assumption underlying the ticking time bomb defense is that abusive questioning reliably causes people to reveal truthful information that they would otherwise refuse to disclose. Few scholars have scrutinized this assumption—and none with the rigor, depth, and clarity of Shane O'Mara in his excellent book, Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation Invoking the relevant science, he shows that torture undermines the very neurocognitive mechanisms requisite for recalling veridical information from memory.”—Richard McNally, Science

Review Science

“A catalog of the scientific evidence of how torture is at best ineffective, usually counterproductive, and always inhumane. In his exhaustive examination of the psychological literature on human (and animal) stress responses, O'Mara combs through numerous studies demonstrating how those stress responses are related to memory retrieval and communication, which are the stated goals of the U.S. military's ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.' The author's main argument—that we could argue forever about the ethics of torture, but the point is moot if the techniques don't even work to solicit the information sought—is confirmed over and over as he works through experiments on the effects of sleep deprivation, pain, drowning, heating, cooling, sensory deprivation, and more. The experiments range from the well-known obedience experiments of Stanley Milgram to lesser-known studies that measured the cognitive effects of changes in core body temperature. O'Mara leaves no stone unturned as he meticulously details the procedures and outcomes of each experiment Everything you never wanted to know—but probably should—about interrogation techniques and outcomes.”—Kirkus Reviews

Review Kirkus