PolitiFact continues its campaign of misinformation on waterboarding

Amazing. Simply amazing.

PolitiFact Bias co-editor Jeff D. caught PolitiFact continuing its tendency to misinform its readers about waterboarding in a Jan 29, 2017 tweet:

Scientific research shows that waterboarding, which @POTUS has supported, doesn't work: https://t.co/4pm2EdgbzX

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) January 28, 2017

PolitiFact's claim was untrue, as I demonstrated in a May 30, 2016 article at Zebra Fact Check, "Torture narrative trumps facts at PolitiFact."

Though PolitiFact claims scientific research shows waterboarding doesn't work, the only "scientific evidence in the linked article concerns the related conditions of hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypercapnia (excess carbon dioxide). PolitiFact reasoned that because science shows that hypoxia and hypercapnia inhibit memory, therefore waterboarding would not work as a means of gaining meaningful intelligence.

The obvious problem with that line of evidence?

Waterboarding as practiced by the CIA takes mere seconds. Journalist Christopher Hitchens had himself waterboarded and broke, saying he would tell whatever he knew, after about 18 seconds.  Memos released by the Obama administration revealed that a continuous waterboarding treatment could last a maximum 40 seconds.

Prisoners could be subjected to waterboarding during one 30 day period
Maximum five treatment days per 30 days
Maximum two waterboarding sessions per treatment day	Max 2 hours per session (the length of time the prisoner is strapped down)
Maximum 40 seconds of continuous water application
Maximum six water applications over 10 seconds long per session	Maximum 240 seconds (four minutes) of waterboarding per session from applications over 10 seconds long
Maximum total of 12 minutes of treatment with water over any 24 hour period	Applications under 10 seconds long could make up a maximum 8 minutes on top of the four mentioned above

While it is worth noting that reports indicate the CIA exceeded these guidelines in the case of al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, these limits are not conducive to creating significant conditions of hypoxia or hypercapnia.

The typical person can hold their breath for 40 seconds without too much difficulty or distress. The CIA's waterboarding was designed to bring about the sensation of drowning, not the literal effects of drowning (hypoxia, hypercapnia, aspiration and swallowing of water). That is why the techniques often break prisoners in about 10 seconds.

And the other problem?

The CIA did not interrogate prisoners while waterboarding them. Nor did the CIA use the technique to obtain confessions under duress. Waterboarding was used to make prisoners more amenable to conventional forms of interrogation.

None of this information is difficult to find.

Why do the fact checkers at PolitiFact (not to mention elsewhere) have such a tough time figuring this stuff out?

There likely isn't any significant scientific evidence either for or against the effectiveness of waterboarding. PolitiFact pretending there is does not make it so.

Zebra Fact Check: "Torture narrative trumps facts at PolitiFact"

Our previous post highlights a Flopping Aces critique of a PolitiFact Florida ruling on whether waterboarding works. Back on May 10, 2016, we posted "What is 'empirical evidence' to PolitiFact?" to highlight PolitiFact's mishandling of the evidence in an earlier waterboarding fact check of Hillary Clinton. At my fact check site, Zebra Fact Check, I sifted both PolitiFact fact checks for the evidence they used to find that waterboarding does not work.

That examination led to an article titled "Torture narrative trumps facts at PolitiFact" and its conclusion:

We don’t have the evidence to know whether waterboarding works. PolitiFact had no business issuing “True” and “False” ratings of statements it cannot verify as true or false. At least not while pretending to serve as a neutral fact checker.

Bias serves as the best explanation for PolitiFact’s treating the two claims according to different standards and justifying its ratings fallaciously.

See the article at Zebra Fact Check for a detailed examination of PolitiFact's evidences.

Find some of my older writing on waterboarding here.

Flopping Aces: "PolitiFact is PolitiWrong on Waterboarding"

I've been slow to post about my Zebra Fact Check critique of PolitiFact's reporting on waterboarding. I'll post that to PolitiFact bias soon, but it comes to my attention that the conservative blog Flopping Aces has a post, "PolitiFact is PolitiWrong on Waterboarding," that overlaps mine in quite a few ways.

"Wordsmith":

Epic fail and lazy research on the part of PolitiFact for not going beyond mainstream media’s superficial reporting which basically accepted and parroted the bullet points given out from the Feinstein Report.

They did consult Reed College political science professor Darius Rejali. But while an expert in what he knows, what he knows also reveals what he doesn’t know: Basically, that he’s ignorant of the arguments made from experts on the other side of the coin. He simply knocks down the strawman claims, hawked around ad nauseam by the critics for years now.

Wordsmith has the details to back up his assertions.

Visit Flopping Aces and read the whole thing.

What is 'empirical evidence" to PolitiFact?

At Stanford University, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed some things aren't working in the war on terror. Clinton named torture among them:

Enter PolitiFact:

PolitiFact thus endorses Clinton's claim that empirical evidence shows torture does not work.

Do the people at PolitiFact understand the concept of "empirical evidence"?

It's striking that PolitiFact finds Clinton's statement "True" despite not supplying a single shred of evidence supporting Clinton's claim.

PolitiFact correctly notes the difficulty with the scientific study of torture:

Because nobody's going to volunteer to be part of a scientific study where you might get tortured — ethics review boards might be apoplectic about such a proposal — the only way to examine the issue is through case studies.

Game over. Case studies provide a type of empirical evidence, but anecdotal evidence, being anecdotal, does not lend itself to generalizations. Therefore, case studies do not empirically support the broad generalization that torture does not work. That goes double for case studies not specifically geared toward answering the issue scientifically.

The entire exercise, parading under the banner of "fact-checking," at best substitutes the opinions of experts for empirical data. And it is worth emphasizing that the experts' opinions have no firm basis in empirical data--only case studies.

At worst, the fact check treats congressional reports as proof.

PolitiFact's summary, even as it gives Clinton a "True" rating, implicitly confesses its failure:

Clinton said that when it comes to fighting terrorism, "Another thing we know that does not work, based on lots of empirical evidence, is torture."

When it comes to the real goal of getting useful intelligence, the preponderance of the evidence shows that the details interrogators will get from a detainee can typically be acquired without torture. When torture is used, the "information" extracted is likely to be fiction created by a prisoner who will say anything to get the punishment to stop.

All ethical issues aside, the experts say, it doesn't work because it is extremely inefficient and, in many ways, counterproductive.

PolitiFact says "the preponderance of evidence" shows information obtained through torture might be obtained without torture. But Clinton said we know, thanks to empirical evidence, that torture simply does not work. She calls it a "fact." The second paragraph in PolitiFact's summary does not support Clinton's claim, despite PolitiFact using it as justification. Compare PolitiFact's approach to the claim it is "clear" Clinton broke the law with her handling of top secret information. It's a different standard.

PolitiFact's experts say that torture does not work because it is extremely inefficient. But a thing that works inefficiently works, albeit inefficiently. It clouds the issue to claim something doesn't work because it works inefficiently.

PolitiFact's fact check clouds the issue on torture. We do not possess enough empirical data to know torture does not work. Giving Clinton a "True" rating makes a total mockery of journalistic objectivity.