There are already many divergent opinions over the role US psychologists should play in military interrogations. The actions of psychologists have been called into question lately as investigations and reports conducted at detention centers found that some of the methods used by them may have violated the American Psychological Association’s policies.

It is known that psychologists have played a major role in the military and CIA interrogation of detainees, but now members of the American Psychological Association are considering whether to make any involvement in military interrogations a violation of their ethics code, The New York Times reported.

“Torture and abuse are always unethical and prohibited,” said Stephen Behnke, who directs the association’s ethics office, according to the same source.

A report prepared by the Justice Department revealed the rough methods and harsh interrogation tactics that were used on detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq. The inspector general found that FBI agents and military psychologists participated in interrogations using harsh interrogation tactics that would not have been permitted in the Unites States. These tactics included “prolonged constraint,” “exposure,” and “sleep deprivation.”

This problem has been one of the key issues at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention this week in Boston, where members of the association denounced such work as unethical by definition. On the other hand, some of them said that the vast majority of military psychologists know the ethics code and the debate should focus only on the individual psychologist behavior.

However, the American Psychological Association’s most recent ethics amendments ban direct or indirect participation in 19 forms of torture including mock execution, rape, use of drugs, and exposure to extreme temperatures.