"The remarks of one official at a HIG-organized conference on torture in Washington DC can be summed up as: how could a new agency, created to both conduct and study torture, replace the decades of practice and perfection attained by the CIA? By adding a scientific component, responded the newly appointed head of the HIG...
This exchange highlights the theme of neuroscientist Shane O'Mara's Why Torture Doesn't Work. Rightly, O'Mara takes a moral stand against torture (forced retrieval of information from the memories of the unwilling). However, instead of simply providing utilitarian arguments, he 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...
Given that information obtained under torture is rarely reliable (because the victim will generally say anything to make the pain stop) O'Mara recommends an alternative: conversation. Having a conversation with a detainee may yield results comparable, and probably superior, to those obtained from torture. He cites three pieces of evidence."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v527/n7576/full/527035a.html?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
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