RTFA: http://www.metafilter.com/68915/Psychologists-Prot…

Citing the organization’s “sharp shift in values and direction,” Ken Pope, prominent member of the American Psychological Association (and a former chair of its Ethics Committee), resigned his membership on February 6. He’s the latest of a growing number of professional psychologists who have quit APA in protest of its position on the use of psychologists in government interrogations in the “War on Terror.”

The APA has stopped short of banning members from conducting torture, and instead has issued statements that prohibit members from performing specific actions during interrogation. It has become clear that certain APA members are actively involved in torture on behalf of the US government, and although the APA has been pressed on the issue, the APA has remained silent. Therefore, the statements by the APA that would condemn torture have been shown to be hollow.

In all, this amounts to a tacit approval of torture practices by APA members.

RTFA: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/1…

The black-white gap, he pointed out, differs dramatically by age. He noted that the tests we have for measuring the cognitive functioning of infants, though admittedly crude, show the races to be almost the same. By age four, the average black I.Q. is 95.4-only four and a half points behind the average white I.Q. Then the real gap emerges: from age four through twenty-four, blacks lose six-tenths of a point a year, until their scores settle at 83.4.
That steady decline, Flynn said, did not resemble the usual pattern of genetic influence. Instead, it was exactly what you would expect, given the disparate cognitive environments that whites and blacks encounter as they grow older. Black children are more likely to be raised in single-parent homes than are white children-and single-parent homes are less cognitively complex than two-parent homes. The average I.Q. of first-grade students in schools that blacks attend is 95, which means that “kids who want to be above average don’t have to aim as high.” There were possibly adverse differences between black teen-age culture and white teen-age culture, and an enormous number of young black men are in jail-which is hardly the kind of environment in which someone would learn to put on scientific spectacles.
Flynn then talked about what we’ve learned from studies of adoption and mixed-race children-and that evidence didn’t fit a genetic model, either. If I.Q. is innate, it shouldn’t make a difference whether it’s a mixed-race child’s mother or father who is black. But it does: children with a white mother and a black father have an eight-point I.Q. advantage over those with a black mother and a white father. And it shouldn’t make much of a difference where a mixed-race child is born. But, again, it does: the children fathered by black American G.I.s in postwar Germany and brought up by their German mothers have the same I.Q.s as the children of white American G.I.s and German mothers. The difference, in that case, was not the fact of the children’s blackness, as a fundamentalist would say. It was the fact of their Germanness-of their being brought up in a different culture, under different circumstances. “The mind is much more like a muscle than we’ve ever realized,” Flynn said. “It needs to get cognitive exercise. It’s not some piece of clay on which you put an indelible mark.” The lesson to be drawn from black and white differences was the same as the lesson from the Netherlands years ago: I.Q. measures not just the quality of a person’s mind but the quality of the world that person lives in.

Very interesting book review, about a potentially interesting book. Flynn, of the Flynn Effect (more in TFA) writes on the topic of IQ and race. The observation that each successive generation tests better on IQ tests than the previous generation is attributed to Flynn.

The “brain as muscle” analogy is right-on, and there are several decades of compelling research on other species (e.g. mice, primates) that demonstrate a relationship between correlates of intelligence and the cognitive complexity of the environment. If mouse A lives in a cage with lots of toys, and mouse B lives in a plain white cube, then there are a number of outcomes: mouse A runs mazes faster, learns certain tasks faster, and the neurons in its brain connect to more other neurons than for mouse B.

Here is a meta-citation for you.

RTFA: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/new…

When Matej Kus’s teammates heard him talking after he was knocked out in a speedway accident, they were relieved he was conscious.

But they were also a little surprised.

For although the 18-year- old Czech knew only the most basic English phrases, he was conversing fluently in the language with paramedics.

Er? This definitely warrants closer inspection

RTFA: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/03/AR2007090300933.html?hpid=moreheadlines

The psychological insights yielded by the research, which has been confirmed in a number of peer-reviewed laboratory experiments, have broad implications for public policy. The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.
This phenomenon may help explain why large numbers of Americans incorrectly think that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in planning the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi. While these beliefs likely arose because Bush administration officials have repeatedly tried to connect Iraq with Sept. 11, the experiments suggest that intelligence reports and other efforts to debunk this account may in fact help keep it alive.
Similarly, many in the Arab world are convinced that the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was not the work of Arab terrorists but was a controlled demolition; that 4,000 Jews working there had been warned to stay home that day; and that the Pentagon was struck by a missile rather than a plane.

Several layers of interest in this story. Approximately, denial helps to strengthen myths. Also, although 9/11 is a major event, a surprising amount of mis-information surrounds it.

Also worth noting: Washington Post makes it tricky to quote and cite them. It’s almost as if they don’t want other people to comment on their story.

RTFA: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/05/psychological-tortur.html

your jaw may drop when you read the chapter titles:

* The Physiological State of the Interrogation Subject as it Affects
Brain Function

* The Effects of Reduced Environmental Stimulation on Human Behavior:
A Review

* The Use of Drugs in Interrogation

* Physiological Responses as a Means of Evaluating Information

* The Potential Uses of Hypnosis in Interrogation

* The Experimental Investigation of Interpersonal Influence

* Countermanipulation through Malingering

These articles were written by the people who were paid by the US
government, mostly in the 1950s, to research brainwashing and
interrogation techniques by giving people drugs, placing them under
sensory deprivation, hypnotizing them, etc. etc. Many of these
experiments essentially involve torture and are likely to be widely
regarded as highly unethical. This is fundamental research, and if
there was any followup research done, it has not yet been published
for public consumption.

Contains link to original text.