Bad Science

Source: The Center for American Progress

Science magazine has an a piece in its Policy Forum on the science used to justify the use of torture on suspected terrorists. Bad science can be of two kinds:

• Done badly, in the sense that it fails either to develop valid information or to communicate information accurately and precisely.
• Immoral, especially if in the process of scientific investigation it violates human rights, such as the right of human subjects to be informed as to the nature of the research and with that information to consent to participate.

Both kinds of bad apply to the science used by the Bush administration to justify torture.

It seems to me that people who consent to be subject to torture or severe physical or mental stress could not be relied upon to respond in the same way as people who were tortured or stressed without their consent. So there is a basic problem in doing other than bad prospective studies of torture.

Perhaps it might be possible to do studies of victims of torture if one were to do longitudinal studies of the physical and mental aftereffects of torture. Unfortunately, there are still many people being tortured each year. I suspect that randomized case-control studies of post torture therapy would not only produce good science, but perhaps would help develop post-torture therapies that would help future victims.