Anti-torture reforms opposed within psychology group after damning report

[unhappycamper]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/02/psychological-association-anti-torture-reforms



Tempers rise within American Psychological Association, which independent review recently found was complicit in brutal military and CIA interrogation

Anti-torture reforms opposed within psychology group after damning report
Spencer Ackerman in New York
Sunday 2 August 2015 07.00 EDT

Opposition is building to intended anti-torture reforms within the largest professional organization of psychologists in the US, which faces a crossroads over what a recent report described as its past support for brutal military and CIA interrogations.

Before the American Psychological Association (APA) meets in Toronto next Thursday for what all expect will be a fraught convention that reckons with an independent review that last month found the APA complicit in torture, former military voices within the profession are urging the organization not to participate in what they describe as a witch hunt.

Reformers consider the pushback to represent entrenched opposition to cleaving the APA from a decade’s worth of professional cooperation with controversial detentions and interrogations. The APA listserv has become a key debating forum, with tempers rising on both sides.

A recent letter from the president of the APA’s military-focused wing warns that proposed ethics changes, likely to be discussed in Toronto, represent pandering to a “politically motivated, anti-government and anti-military stance”. A retired army colonel called David Hoffman, a former federal prosecutor whose scathing inquiry described APA “collusion” with US torture, an “executioner”.

[bemildred]

1. The squall of the cornered war criminal. nt

[MisterP]

2. is it bad that the moment that David Niose blamed Charleston on America not listening to

the experts I suspected something bad and big was about to come from the psychology sector? I should've put money on it--I never lose bets like this, but it'd be blood money