Coalition Responds to Invitation from APA's "PENS II" Task Force

The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology has been invited to nominate a consultant to “review materials” for the American Psychological Association’s so-called “member-initiated task force.” This task force purports to “reconcile policies related to psychologists’ involvement in national security settings.” We have declined the invitation because we reject both the aims and the legitimacy of this task force (hereafter referred to as “PENS II”) – and we discourage others from participating.

The entire response is here.

Others posts about the PENS report can be found by searching this blog via the "search" function.

Here is a portion of the response:

"Since the PENS Report became APA policy in 2005, subsequent APA policies related to interrogations (with the exception of the Referendum) have been framed in ways largely consistent with the PENS Report. As such, they are all “fruit of a poisoned tree.” Any constructive attempt to consolidate national security policies must therefore begin with annulment of the PENS Report in order to remove its corrosive influence on the profession of psychology and on the unexamined proliferation of operational psychology in coercive contexts.

The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology unequivocally rejects collaboration with the illegitimate PENS II “task force” and calls for its dissolution. We further encourage others to refuse to collaborate with this effort aimed at undermining true reform. PENS II is built upon faulty premises. If successful, it would enshrine one of the darkest initiatives in APA policy-making."

Protecting Psychologists Who Harm: The APA's Latest Wrong Turn

By Roy Eidelson
Truth-out.org
Opinion

Shortly after learning about the American Psychological Association's (APA) late February announcement of its new Member-Initiated Task Force to Reconcile Policies Related to Psychologists' Involvement in National Security Settings, I found my thoughts turning to the School of the Americas, Blackwater and perhaps even more surprisingly, the Patagonian toothfish. Those may seem like a strange threesome, but they share one important thing in common. All have undergone a thorough repackaging and renaming in a marketing effort aimed at obscuring - but not altering - some ugly truth.

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What can annulment of the PENS Report accomplish? First, annulment will serve to indisputably repudiate the illegitimate process by which the military-intelligence establishment took control over the core ethics of psychology as a profession. Second, annulment will set the stage for a long-overdue transparent, broad-based and independent examination - by psychologists, by human rights advocates, by national security experts and by ethicists - of whether or not it is ethical for psychologists to serve in aggressive operational roles in national security settings. More than a decade has passed since the attacks of 9/11, yet this fundamental question has never been honestly and openly addressed. Indeed, the PENS Report was strategically designed to take this question off the table - by offering the mere pretense of meaningful discussion and debate.

The entire story is here.

A blog post referencing the member-initiated task force is here.

A blog post referencing the PENS report is here.