[tp] Neuroscience, Special Forces, and Ethics at Yale

Tue Mar 12 15:07:55 PDT 2013

http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/119672

Published on Psychology Today (http://www.psychologytoday.com)

Neuroscience, Special Forces, and Ethics at Yale

By Roy Eidelson, Ph.D.

Created Mar 6 2013

Last month, a proposal to establish a U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM)
Center for Excellence in Operational Neuroscience at Yale University died a
not-so-quiet death. The broad goal of "operational neuroscience" is to use
research on the human brain and nervous system to protect and give tactical
advantage to U.S. warfighters in the field. Crucial questions remain
unanswered about the proposed center's mission and the unusual circumstances
surrounding its demise. But just as importantly, this episode brings much
needed attention to the morally fraught and murky terrain where partnerships
between university researchers and national security agencies lie.

A Brief Chronology

Let's start with what transpired, according to the news reports and official
press releases. In late January, the Yale Herald reported that the Department
of Defense had awarded $1.8 million to Yale University's School of Medicine
for the creation of the new center under the direction of Yale psychiatrist
Charles Morgan III. Descriptions of the proposed center's work revolved around
the teaching of Morgan's interviewing techniques to U.S. Special Forces in
order to improve their intelligence gathering. To heighten the soldiers'
cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity, Morgan reportedly intended to draw
volunteer interviewees from New Haven's immigrant communities.

Such details typically become public only after a university center has been
formally established and its funding officially secured. In this case,
however, the early news reports - which included statements from
director-to-be Morgan - quickly led last month to a widely circulated Yale
Daily News op-ed, an online petition, a Facebook page, and protests by
students and local groups outraged over reports of Yale's support for the
military center and plans to treat immigrants as "guinea pigs." According to
ABC News/Univision, in response Morgan explained that he was approached by the
Defense Department to help "promote better relations between U.S. troops and
the people whose villages they work in and around" - by teaching soldiers
"better communication skills" and "how to ask non-leading questions, how to
listen to what people are saying, how to understand them."

A public affairs officer for U.S. SOCOM initially confirmed that it was
providing funding for the center. Shortly thereafter, Yale University
representatives issued a conflicting statement. Characterizing the center as
"an educational and research center with a goal of promoting humane and
culturally respectful interview practices among a limited number of members of
the armed forces, including medics," they emphasized that no formal proposal
had been submitted for academic and ethical review. Yale also noted that
volunteer interviewees "selected from diverse ethnic groups" would be
protected by university oversight, and that public reports about the center
were in part "based on speculation and incomplete information." Three days
later, SOCOM's spokesperson retracted his previous statement, explaining that
the information provided had been incorrect, and that no funds for the center
would be forthcoming. Yale confirmed that the center would not be established
at the university. Two days later, SOCOM declared that, in fact, they had
decided a year earlier not to fund Morgan's proposal.

Ethical Risks of Operational Neuroscience

The name of the proposed center - the U.S. SOCOM Center of Excellence for
Operational Neuroscience - deserves more attention and scrutiny than it has
received thus far.The burgeoning interdisciplinary field of operational
neuroscience - supported by hundreds of millions of dollars from the
Department of Defense - is indisputably much larger and much more worrisome
from an ethical perspective than the mere teaching of interview techniques and
people skills would suggest. What makes this particular domain of scientific
work so controversial is not only its explicit purpose of advancing military
goals. The methods by which these ends are pursued are equally disquieting
because they raise the specter of "mind control" and threaten our deeply held
convictions about personhood and personal autonomy.

In a presentation to the intelligence community five years ago, program
manager Amy Kruse from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
identified operational neuroscience as DARPA's latest significant
accomplishment, preceded by milestone projects that included the Stealth
Fighter, ARPANET, the GPS, and the Predator drone. National security interests
in operational neuroscience encompass non-invasive, non-contact approaches for
interacting with a person's central and peripheral nervous systems; the use of
sophisticated narratives to influence the neural mechanisms responsible for
generating and maintaining collective action; applications of biotechnology to
degrade enemy performance and artificially overwhelm cognitive capabilities;
remote control of brain activity using ultrasound; indicators of individual
differences in adaptability and resilience in extreme environments; the
effects of sleep deprivation on performance and circadian rhythms; and
neurophysiologic methods for measuring stress during military survival
training.

Anthropologist Hugh Gusterson, bioethicist Jonathan Moreno, and other
outspoken scholars have offered strong warnings about potential perils
associated with the "militarization of neuroscience" and the proliferation of
"neuroweapons." Comparing the circumstances facing neuroscientists today with
those faced by nuclear scientists during World War II, Gusterson has written,
"We've seen this story before: The Pentagon takes an interest in a rapidly
changing area of scientific knowledge, and the world is forever changed. And
not for the better." Neuroscientist Curtis Bell has called for colleagues to
pledge that they will refrain from any research that applies neuroscience in
ways that violate international law or human rights; he cites aggressive war
and coercive interrogation methods as two examples.

Research Misapplied: SERE and "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Some may argue that these concerns are overblown, but the risks associated
with "dual use" research are well recognized and well documented. Even though
a particular project may be designed to pursue outcomes that society
recognizes as beneficial and worthy, the technologies or discoveries may still
be susceptible to distressing misuse. As a government request for public
comment recently highlighted, certain types of research conducted for
legitimate purposes "can be reasonably anticipated to provide knowledge,
information, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied to
pose a significant threat with broad potential consequences to public health
and safety...."

Yale's Morgan must surely be aware that operational neuroscience research can
be used for purposes contrary to its purported intent - as this appears to be
what happened with some of his own work. Morgan's biographical sketch on the
School of Medicine website refers to his research on the "psycho-neurobiology
of resilience in elite soldiers" and "human performance under conditions of
high stress." Both of these topics are related to his extensive study of the
effects of the military's physically and psychologically grueling Survival,
Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training program. In SERE training,
soldiers are subjected to extreme conditions in order to inoculate them
against enemy interrogation should they be captured and subjected to torture
by forces that don't observe international laws prohibiting prisoner abuse.
The techniques applied during the trainee's simulated incarceration and mock
interrogations include isolation, stress positions, sleep and food
deprivation, loud noises, sexual humiliation, extreme temperatures,
confinement in small spaces, and in some cases waterboarding.

Along with colleagues, Morgan has published a series of research articles
examining the psychological, physiological, and biological effects of the SERE
program. In summarizing key findings of this research, Morgan and his
co-authors highlighted the following: the stress induced by SERE is within the
range of real-world stress; SERE students recover normally and do not show
negative effects from the training; and the mock interrogations do not produce
lasting adverse reactions as measured by physiological and biological
indicators. However, after reviewing these same studies, the authors of a
Physicians for Human Rights report reached a starkly different conclusion:
"SERE ... techniques, even when used in limited and controlled settings,
produce harmful health effects on consenting soldier-subjects exposed to
them." They also emphasized that during the training many students experienced
dissociative reactions and hormone level changes comparable to major surgery
or actual combat; the post-training assessments were short-term and
insufficient to evaluate soldiers for PTSD and related disorders; and the
soldiers benefited from knowing that they could end their participation
whenever they chose to do so.

SERE research like that conducted by Morgan and his colleagues was
subsequently misused by the Bush Administration after the 9/11 terrorist
attacks to illegitimately authorize the abuse and torture of national security
detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air Base, and CIA "black sites." The
infamous "enhanced interrogation techniques" (EITs) were developed by former
SERE psychologists - working for the CIA - who "reverse-engineered" the SERE
interrogation tactics. But even more importantly here, a crucial 2002 Office
of Legal Counsel "torture memo" asserted that the EITs did not cause lasting
psychological harm, and it cited as evidence consultation with interrogation
experts and outside psychologists, as well as a review of the "relevant
literature" - which plausibly would have included Morgan's own extensive work
in the area. In short, this appears to be a striking and tragic instance where
operational neuroscience research, undertaken in a different context, was
subsequently appropriated and misapplied for unconscionable purposes. It is
worth adding that these prisoners were subjected to indefinite detention
without trial and they were not free to discontinue their torturous
interrogations at will. Their torture sessions were also substantially longer
and the techniques were instituted more frequently and with greater intensity
than Morgan's research subjects experienced.

Morgan's Deception Detection Research

Another significant area of operational neuroscience research for Morgan has
been deception detection - that is, figuring out when someone isn't being
truthful during an interview, or an interrogation. According to his online CV,
he has received Department of Defense funding totaling nearly $2 million for
this work over the past several years. Research on this same topic reportedly
also became an important focus of attention for several intelligence agencies
- including the CIA - immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Befitting his
expertise and stature in the field, Morgan has been involved in a variety of
high-level initiatives designed to bring together university researchers and
personnel from the defense and intelligence sectors.

For example, Morgan is among the listed attendees at a July 2003
invitation-only workshop on "The Science of Deception: Integration of Theory
and Practice." The event was co-hosted by the American Psychological
Association (APA) and the RAND Corporation, with generous funding from the
CIA. The participants discussed various scenarios, including one focused on
law enforcement interrogation and debriefing, and another on intelligence
gathering. They also explored specific research questions, such as which
pharmacological agents affect truth-telling, and whether it might be possible
to overwhelm a person's senses so as to reduce his capacity to engage in
deception during an interrogation. Psychologist Jeffrey Kaye has noted that,
in a very unusual step, the APA has scrubbed most of the information about
this workshop from its website.

In June 2004 Morgan was a participant at another invitation-only workshop -
co-sponsored by the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the APA - titled "The
Nature and Influence of Intuition in Law Enforcement: Integration of Theory
and Practice." Among the topics examined were the extent to which police
officers, intelligence analysts, interrogators, and others can effectively use
"intuition" in their work - for instance, in order to detect deception - and
how such capabilities might be applied to counterterrorism efforts. The
proceedings from this event identify Morgan as "Senior Research Scientist,
Behavioral Science Staff, Central Intelligence Agency" - a professional
affiliation that does not appear on his online CV.

Morgan is credited with a similar affiliation in the 2006 report "Educing
Information," published by the National Defense Intelligence College. As a
member of the Government Experts Committee, Morgan is listed as working for
the "Intelligence Technology Innovation Center," an administrative unit that
falls under the CIA. The foreword to the report describes the volume as "a
primer on the 'science and art' of both interrogation and intelligence
gathering." Included is a chapter on deception detection by Morgan's close
research colleague, psychologist Gary Hazlett. One of Hazlett's
recommendations in the report is that "the United States adopt an aggressive,
focused plan to support research and development of enhanced capabilities to
validate information and the veracity of sources." He also notes that the most
troubling limitation of deception research thus far is the lack of "various
Asian, Middle Eastern, Central and South American, or African populations" as
research participants.

Responding to Morgan's reported plans for a new center at Yale, local advocacy
group Junta for Progressive Action issued a statement of concern last month.
It noted that, "As a city that has worked to establish itself as a welcoming
and inclusive city for immigrants, the idea of targeting immigrants
specifically for the purpose of identifying the distinction of how they lie is
offensive, disrespectful and out of line with the values of New Haven." In a
recent newspaper report, Morgan called rumors that the proposed center at Yale
would teach new interrogation techniques mere "hype and fantasy," explaining
that he instead "suggested to the Army that perhaps some training in people
skills - how to talk to and listen to people might be helpful and create
better relations." Even assuming that this reassuring account is true, it's
certainly not unreasonable to question whether deception detection research
and training might have been part of the proposed center's future operational
neuroscience agenda.

Classified and Unclassified Research on Campus

There are broader questions beyond those focused specifically on the uncertain
details and background surrounding the not-to-be Center of Excellence for
Operational Neuroscience at Yale. The unusual sequence of events that unfolded
in New Haven last month should ideally serve as a springboard for open
discussion of the opportunities and pitfalls associated with research
partnerships between universities and national security agencies. To its
credit, Yale University has a clear policy that explicitly prohibits its
faculty from conducting secret or classified research:

    The University does not conduct or permit its faculty to conduct secret or
classified research. This policy arises from concern about the impact of such
restrictions on two of the University's essential purposes: to impart
knowledge and to enlarge humanity's store of knowledge. Both are clearly
inhibited when open publication, free discussion, or access to research are
limited.

But not all academic institutions have such stringent rules, which are
necessary to promote full transparency, informed critiques by other scholars
and researchers, and constructive engagement beyond the walls of higher
education institutions. At the same time, it should be noted that, even at
Yale, voluntary faculty members - Morgan's official status at the university -
do not need to disclose research activities that are not being conducted on
behalf of Yale.

Some of the most challenging ethical issues remain even when classified
research is not conducted on university campuses. As psychologist Stephen
Soldz has highlighted, in cases of unclassified research funded by national
security agencies, the academic researchers are not necessarily informed about
the totality of the projects to which they are contributing. He offers the
example of findings from seemingly uncontroversial deception detection
studies, which may ultimately become the basis for the capture, indefinite
detention, and torturous interrogation of prisoners in undisclosed locations -
well beyond the university researchers' awareness. Soldz also warns that
researchers may never know if their campus work has become "part of a vast
secret effort to unlock the mystery of mind control and develop techniques for
coercive interrogations, as happened to hundreds of behavioral scientists and
others in the decades of the CIA's MKULTRA and other Cold War behavioral
science initiatives." These risks are further exacerbated for psychologists,
psychiatrists, and other health professionals for whom a "do no harm" ethic
intrinsically poses conflicts with research projects aimed at identifying and
destroying those who are considered adversaries.

Next Steps

There are applications of operational neuroscience - such as improved
prosthetic limbs for injured veterans and more effective treatments for
victims of brain injury - that are compelling in their apparent value and
their promotion of human welfare. But other applications raise profound
concerns, especially where the defining goals and priorities of a university
and its medical researchers and scientists diverge from those of national
security and intelligence operatives. Community health sciences professor
Michael Siegel - a graduate of Yale's School of Medicine - emphasized this
point when he was interviewed on Democracy Now! last month. Siegel noted: "The
practice of medicine was designed to improve people's health, and the school
of medicine should not be taking part in either training or research that is
primarily designed to enhance military objectives."

In this context it's worthwhile to recall exactly who Morgan envisioned as the
trainees for his proposed "people skills" interview project at the medical
school: U.S. Special Forces, the highly skilled soldiers often assigned the
military's most difficult and dangerous missions. These forces - over 60,000
strong including military personnel and civilians - are now covertly deployed
around the globe. Journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin have described
them as "America's secret army." Their counterterrorism operations include
intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids - not only in Afghanistan but
also in countries where the United States is not at war. They've been
authorized to keep "kill lists" of individuals who can be assassinated rather
than captured, and some have conducted brutal interrogations at secret
detention sites. The Army refers to its Special Forces as the "most
specialized experts in unconventional warfare."

At this point, signs clearly indicate that a U.S. SOCOM Center of Excellence
for Operational Neuroscience will not be coming to Yale. But it would be a
mistake to assume that this research - and the very considerable national
security sector funding it attracts - will not find another home. This is why
it's important that the current controversy not be dismissed without fuller
engagement and discussion among all stakeholders of pressing practical and
ethical considerations - before a similar project appears on another campus or
resurfaces in a reconfigured form in New Haven. The prospect of all
defense-related neuroscience research being conducted clandestinely by
government or corporate entities - away from the public and expert oversight
that universities can offer - is far from reassuring, so difficult issues like
this must be tackled head-on.

One valuable next step would be an open forum at Yale. Dr. Morgan could have
the opportunity to describe in greater detail the nature of his deception
detection work and related projects - including his ongoing research in New
Haven about which Yale recently claimed it was unaware. Other distinguished
scientists, ethicists, and human rights experts could provide their
commentaries. And community members, students, faculty, and administrators
could offer their own perspectives and pose questions. Such an event would not
likely produce consensus, but the sharing of information, the free expression
of differing viewpoints, and informed debate are among the most vital
functions of a university. Pending further developments, there are very good
reasons to be concerned - and confused - about the recent twists and turns
surrounding the proposed center at Yale. Many of the most critical questions
still await answers.

Note. A version of this essay first appeared in Counterpunch.
Source URL: http://www.psychologytoday.com/node/119672

Links:
[1] http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/roy-eidelson-phd
[2] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dangerous-ideas
[3] http://www.psychologytoday.com/taxonomy/term/159861
[4] http://www.psychologytoday.com/taxonomy/term/99084
[5] http://www.psychologytoday.com/taxonomy/term/1058
[6] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/abc-news
[7] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/american-psychological-association
[8] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/charles-morgan-0
[9] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/cia
[10] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/cultural-awareness
[11] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/deception-detection
[12] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/early-news
[13] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/ethics
[14] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/guinea-pigs
[15] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/human-brain
[16] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/immigrant-communities
[17] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/intelligence
[18] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/interrogation
[19] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/interviewees
[20] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/interviewing-techniques
[21] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/military
[22] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/military-center
[23] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/national-security-agencies
[24] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/neuroscience
[25] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/online-petition-0
[26] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/operational-neuroscience
[27] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/quiet-death
[28] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/sere-0
[29] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/special-forces
[30] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/tactical-advantage-0
[31] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/torture
[32] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/univision-0
[33] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/warfighters
[34] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/yale
[35] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/yale-daily-news-0
[36] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/yale-herald
[37] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/yale-psychiatrist
[38] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/yale-university

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/technoprogressive/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/technoprogressive/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    technoprogressive-digest at yahoogroups.com
    technoprogressive-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    technoprogressive-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

----- End forwarded message -----
--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE