torture of spies...?

Torture of spies is a controversial issues in certain developed countries (reported by Economist a while back). To allow or not to?

The tricky part is that we don't have a reliable or agreed-upon way to quantify the role of torture in getting key information. In other words, if you successfully obtain key info from the spy after torturing him; you have no idea how many percent of the info is attributable to the torturing...you have no idea if you could get the same result (info of same importance with same timing) without torturing him. Some ppl say yes; some say no. No reliable way to prove.

Seems to me, that ultimately it's up to what we, or 'the authority', choose to believe....

Now you know the power of beliefs. It happens in social sciences all the time.

And in natural sciences too, some people said.