Article archive / February 1, 2016
Originally published: . Volume 7, No. 2. Source pages: 4.
President of the Society for Military Psychology, Division 19 of the American Psychological Association (APA), Thomas Williams, PhD, wrote to the APA Board of Directors in November, and provided a review by the Division’s task force listing factual and procedural errors in the Hoffman Report. Williams called for corrective actions by APA, which had banned all psychologists’ work in national security interrogations.
The Hoffman Report rocked APA last year when attorney David Hoffman found what he viewed as “collusion” between APA officials, military psychologists members, and the Department of Defense.
Dr. Williams and the Division 19 task force members said that Hoffman’s approach set the stage for “confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and motivated reasoning.”
The Division 19 reviewers also said that the Hoffman team did not understand military behavior or the military culture, and that statements by some that would have refuted Hoffman’s conclusions, were “discounted or mischaracterized because they did not correspond with the central conclusions made in the report.”
The task force pointed out that the timeline shows that the 2005 PENS Task Force was attempting to stop abuse in interrogations, not support it. But they said, this evidence was ignored. Also ignored, they said, were thousands of hours of work in interrogations that were conducted without incident, and also with proactive intent to prevent abuse and to report human rights violations.
The reviewers said that Hoffman’s conclusion that the safety roles of military psychologists being viewed as “naïve or intentionally disingenuous,” indicates “… how little the Hoffman team learned about how effective interrogations actually work and the safeguards that are employed.”
“Rather than acknowledge that there could be genuine, honest differences of opinion on how the PENS Report and subsequent APA policy should be written, the Hoffman Report takes differences of opinion and turns them into condemnations. The Hoffman team never acknowledges what it is doing.”
The Division 19 task force members also criticized the APA ban on all interrogations, pointing out that ethics have to do with behaviors, not setting. They called the move reactionary and aggressive, and one which denies psychologists the right to serve in efforts to reduce risks to “our homeland.”
Along with the list of criticisms, the task force said that the fee paid to Hoffman, originally to fall at $400,000, was increased to $800,000, “and is now approximately $5,000,000.”
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