Another long one...
It seems that there are many comments on this board recommending that we "learn" about "mind control".
In this spirit, below are excerpts from a 1987 "friend-of-the-court" brief filed by several scientists and academics, as well as the American Psychological Association in a case involving expert testimony in a Scientology case. The APA later withdrew its involvement with the brief due to an internal task force that the brief would have been affected by - see below (the brief was not contradicted by the internal APA report when it was released). Please note that Scientology is not being defended in this brief or in this post. I know that there have been many reports of physically abusive behavior by the CoS and I am not defending them in any way... but I think the conclusions reached by the APA below are worth a read (no doubt many on this board have read this before...I beg your patience as I provide an opportunity for those who have not read this before). The entire brief can be found here. Bold text is my own emphasis added - underlines were present in the brief.
From a scientific point of view, it is exceedingly difficult--most would say wholly illegitimate--to evaluate allegedly coercive acts by measuring their effect on some ineffable human quality called free will. To do so, a scientist would have to define what free will is, describe how the environment affects free will, and decide the point at which the effects become so great that free will can be said to be overborne. In such inquiries swirl the deepest philosophical mysteries of human existence; no responsible scientist lays claim to the power to define or discuss free will in this sense....
What responsible scientists can do is investigate the range of observable responses to environmental stimuli. From a scientific perspective, coercion is thus a feature of external environment, inferred from the constricted range of behavior most people show in that environment. When measuring coercion in this statistical sense, psychologists and other behavioral scientists can infer the degree of coercion of a particular complex of stimuli by measuring how much it affects the range of behaviors most people generally show. When an apparently fit beggar asks for money, for example, a few people give a little, a few give more, and most simply walk on. Begging, then, is not ordinarily very coercive. When a mugger asks for money with a knife at the victim's throat, most people give it. Armed mugging is quite coercive....
If empirical evidence shows that the great majority of people subjected to a particular complex of stimuli exhibit a very limited range of behaviors, even though other behaviors were physically possible, it can be said that this complex of stimuli is an effective constraint. Conversely, when persons subjected to particular stimuli engage in a broad range of behaviors, it cannot be said that this complex of stimuli is coercive in any scientifically meaningful sense...
When plaintiffs' theory of coercive persuasion is evaluated in this scientific way, its plausibility evaporates. A significant and uncontradicted body of empirical social science evidence demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of persons who undergo the process plaintiffs describe as "coercive persuasion," even for a period of weeks, choose not to affiliate with the Unification Church. Several studies of Unification Church recruitment workshops reveal that, on the average, fewer than one in ten of those who got as far as attending a Church workshop agree to join the Church, and fewer than one in twenty remain with the Church for two years...
Given these statistics...the only conclusion that can scientifically be drawn is that the conversion practices of the Unification Church are not coercive. These practices not only fail to convert at least 90% of those subjected to them, but actually dissuade the overwhelming proportion. Furthermore, although persons who join the Church remain in an environment plaintiffs' experts would characterize as psychologically manipulative, even most of those initially persuaded to join the Church leave it after a period of months or years. ..
Nor does the proffered testimony suggest that even the small percentage of persons who decide to join the Church have been psychologically coerced. Because the Church's conversion practices are not in themselves coercive for the vast majority of people, the operation of some other variable--either alone or interacting with the Church's conversion practices--must explain individual decisions to join the Church. It might be possible, for example, to define a certain subgroup of persons possessing common traits who are particularly likely to respond favorably. Were experts able to show statistically that members of this subgroup will typically respond to the Church's conversion practices by joining the Church, then it might--under some circumstances--be possible to express a scientific opinion that this complex of stimuli was coercive for this subgroup. Drs. Singer and Benson have not, however, purported to undertake any such definition, much less analysis; they simply advance the demonstrably incorrect claim that the conversion practices of the Church are inherently coercive... Precisely because free will is ineffable and not susceptible to direct observation or measurement, drawing any conclusions about deprivation of free will is an exceedingly uncertain enterprise. When scientists purport to conclude that an individual has been deprived of free will they have stepped beyond the sphere of their expertise. Such a claim does not partake of science because it cannot be measured or tested; it has no empirical foundation. Accordingly, when Drs. Singer and Benson proffered testimony that Church conversion practices overcame plaintiffs' free will, they were not speaking as scientists. Their claim must thus be considered unreliable in the most fundamental sense. It is philosophical speculation, not science. Scientists can evaluate the degree to which the conversion practices of the Church result in a decision to join the Church by those subjected to the practices, but all available scientific evidence of this nature refutes the claim of coercion plaintiffs advance. When Drs. Singer and Benson describe the "systematic manipulation of social influences" as "coercive persuasion," they self-consciously ground their claim in a body of scientific inquiry into purported mind-control techniques that became notorious during the Korean War. Seeking to explain why some American prisoners of war held in Korea and China appeared to adopt the belief system of their captors, the popular press advanced the theory that the free will and judgment of these individuals had been overborne by sophisticated techniques of mind control or "brainwashing." Without accepting the claims about "free will," several reputable scientists also concluded that--under conditions of confinement involving extreme physical hardship, isolation for extended periods, deprivation of necessities, physical torture, and threats of death--some individuals might be induced temporarily to accept belief systems antithetical to those they previously held. Under such conditions, survival itself might hinge, or be thought by the captive to hinge, on adopting the captors' ideology. To justify their claim that those subjected to Church conversion practices were deprived of free will, Drs. Singer and Benson have accepted the validity of the claims of brainwashing in the POW context and extended them to the context of the Unification Church. This analytical approach is fundamentally flawed for two reasons. First, Drs. Singer and Benson have exaggerated the findings of the original POW studies ...<details follow> Second, Drs. Singer and Benson have wholly failed to account for a crucial factor distinguishing Unification Church conversion practices from Korean War POW camps: the complete absence in the Church context of physical confinement, torture, death threats and severe physical deprivations. Physical confinement and abuse were--as Dr. Singer acknowledged in another context--central to the debilitating character of POW camps ("Coercive persuasion occurs when a person is subjected to intense and prolonged coercive tactics and persuasion in a situation from which that person cannot escape" ) For these reasons, the overwhelming preponderance of scholars has repudiated the effort to extend the POW mind control hypothesis to the context of new religious movements. This consensus view of relevant professionals fatally undermines a fundamental premise for the conclusions Drs. Singer and Benson assert. Physical confinement and abuse was a necessary condition for coercive persuasion in the POW context. Because the Unification Church context involves no confinement or violence, hypotheses derived in the POW context--whatever their validity there--cannot be generalized to provide valid explanations for Church conversion practices. Thus, the entire conceptual framework for the conclusions of Drs. Singer and Benson has been rejected by the scientific community.
