“Enhanced interrogation” may get someone to talk, but there’s no evidence that it’s the truth. A new book cross examines the true consequences of torture (review by Carl Elliott, MD, PhD Professor, Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota).
Source: Torture doesn’t work, says science: Why are we still doing it?
A review of Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation (Amazon) or from Harvard University Press.
Why Torture Doesn’t Work is a valuable book. O’Mara builds his case like a prosecutor, citing scientific studies and relentlessly poking holes in absurdities and inconsistencies in documents such as the “Torture Memos”. Whether science matters to those who defend torture is another matter, as O’Mara knows: their motivation is often punitive, not practical. But once torture is imposed, the consequences, he says, are that it will be “ineffective, pointless, morally appalling, and unpredictable in its outcomes”.
