09/07/2015
A powerful, convincing and thought-provoking volume. O’Mara presents us with the overwhelming scientific evidence that torture simply does not work. What is more, it damages memory and is highly likely to produce flawed intelligence. Claims of the utility of torture are no more than ‘cargo cult science.’…The significance of this book is difficult to overstate. Its conveyance of moral outrage as regards the practice of torture is unqualified and it delivers the evidence to repudiate all utilitarian justifications of the practice. It offers science-based pointers to manners of conducting interrogation that are both more effective and compliant with human rights standards. Furthermore, given the questions surrounding the utility of all statement-related evidence, it supports the long-standing calls for more focus on such other evidentiary sources as forensics and surveillance. It has a great deal to say to contemporary policy-makers and for police and intelligence services, not least at a moment of enhanced attention to counter-terrorism. The book demonstrates the importance of science in the pursuit of human rights…O’Mara deserves some sort of prize for this work.
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.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.’Why Torture Doesn’t Work is the empirical case against torture, a reading of scientific research which concludes that torture is a poor method of extracting information, and that the people who argued for it and used it had no idea what they were doing…The message of science, according to O’Mara, is unambiguous: torture makes it harder to obtain useful information, not easier…O’Mara deserves a lot of praise for writing a convincing and moral book.
Fascinating…Why Torture Doesn’t Work is the empirical case against torture, a reading of scientific research which concludes that torture is a poor method of extracting information, and that the people who argued for it and used it had no idea what they were doing…The message of science, according to O’Mara, is unambiguous: torture makes it harder to obtain useful information, not easier…O’Mara deserves a lot of praise for writing a convincing and moral book.
Open Letters Monthly - Greg Waldmann
O’Mara marshals a large amount of scientific literature to make his point.
O’Mara recognizes that there are no clear, consistently successfully approaches to getting reliable information from captives. He makes a compelling case, however, that our current naïve intuitions and macho methods, including conducting interrogations in English to show who is in charge, as well as torture, are counterproductive. And that the training and experience of interrogators currently employed by the CIA is woefully inadequate.
Psychology Today - Glenn C. Altschuler
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.
Times Higher Education - Steven Rose
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.
Nature - Lasana T. Harris
Takes a scientific look at how the brain operates—or doesn’t—under stress, and points to more humane ways of getting information.
Shane O’Mara’s book is a rebuttal to the torture memos that came out a few years ago that justified ‘enhanced interrogation’ methods used in Guantanamo Bay and Northern Ireland. He takes an empirical approach to torture. From a scientific point of view, even before getting into the morality, it is just ineffective. The FBI said the best technique is to get clever interrogators who are good at forming bonds. The analogy he uses is that if you had a computer that had information you wanted you wouldn’t hit it with a hammer because that would affect its recall. Humans work the same way.
Irish Examiner - Neil Delamere
One of the most powerful arguments one can make against a practice is that it is self-defeating, given its own goals. This is a highly unusual book on torture—terrifically interesting.
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.
Science - Richard McNally
In a meticulously researched book that reinforces the legal and ethical arguments against torture, Shane O’Mara focuses on its effects on human physiology…As O’Mara shows, torture techniques are mentally debilitating, affecting memory as well as mood, and thereby compromise the capacity of victims to form and deliver a reliable account of any information that they may be withholding. Not only is torture morally deplorable, therefore, but its outcome is also entirely unpredictable…O’Mara capably translates the experimental evidence into accessible language for the general reader.
Financial Times - Giovanni Frazzetto
With accurate and compelling neuroscience, this book will be valuable to individuals outside the neuroscience world—in politics, in the military—who should know the scientific basis of torture as they make and execute policy in this area.
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.’
New Scientist - Carl Elliott
O’Mara shows that the processes of enhanced interrogation do indeed create such stressful states—interestingly, both in the interrogated person and in the interrogator—that it is enormously destructive not only to the person but to the information; and not only immediately but in the longer term… [The book’s] greatest strength, to me, is the rigor of its evident deductivism and the way this is demonstrated, which seems to act almost as a catechism against those who, with Vice President Dick Cheney, would embrace ‘the dark side’ rather blithely… [It] provide[s] key documents testifying to the assumptions of our time about what constitutes a human being.
Times Literary Supplement - Rebecca Lemov
The book takes readers on an extended tour of the brain and the way it functions under the ‘chronic, severe, and extreme stressor states’ produced by forms of torture such as starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding. O’Mara looks at the scientific literature examining the effects of these grim methods and determines that information obtained using them is inherently suspect…The last refuge in the defense of torture has always been an appeal to elevate pragmatism and security over ethics and the law in the face of a ‘ticking time bomb.’ O’Mara’s book reveals the hollowness of that argument.
Foreign Affairs - G. John Ikenberry
Offers a passionate and informative riposte to those who feel a ‘war on terror’ justifies barbarism.
The Guardian - Hayden Murphy
A powerful, convincing and thought-provoking volume. O’Mara presents us with the overwhelming scientific evidence that torture simply does not work. What is more, it damages memory and is highly likely to produce flawed intelligence. Claims of the utility of torture are no more than ‘cargo cult science.’…The significance of this book is difficult to overstate. Its conveyance of moral outrage as regards the practice of torture is unqualified and it delivers the evidence to repudiate all utilitarian justifications of the practice. It offers science-based pointers to manners of conducting interrogation that are both more effective and compliant with human rights standards. Furthermore, given the questions surrounding the utility of all statement-related evidence, it supports the long-standing calls for more focus on such other evidentiary sources as forensics and surveillance. It has a great deal to say to contemporary policy-makers and for police and intelligence services, not least at a moment of enhanced attention to counter-terrorism. The book demonstrates the importance of science in the pursuit of human rights…O’Mara deserves some sort of prize for this work.
A powerful, convincing and thought-provoking volume. O’Mara presents us with the overwhelming scientific evidence that torture simply does not work. What is more, it damages memory and is highly likely to produce flawed intelligence. Claims of the utility of torture are no more than ‘cargo cult science.’…The significance of this book is difficult to overstate. Its conveyance of moral outrage as regards the practice of torture is unqualified and it delivers the evidence to repudiate all utilitarian justifications of the practice. It offers science-based pointers to manners of conducting interrogation that are both more effective and compliant with human rights standards. Furthermore, given the questions surrounding the utility of all statement-related evidence, it supports the long-standing calls for more focus on such other evidentiary sources as forensics and surveillance. It has a great deal to say to contemporary policy-makers and for police and intelligence services, not least at a moment of enhanced attention to counter-terrorism. The book demonstrates the importance of science in the pursuit of human rights…O’Mara deserves some sort of prize for this work.
Irish Times - Michael O’Flaherty
Takes a scientific look at how the brain operates—or doesn’t—under stress, and points to more humane ways of getting information.
Irish Times - Claire O’Connell
11/15/2015
2015-08-16
