The conclusions of the report were foreshadowed in a March 2011 Psychology Today article by Eidelson, Soldz and Mark Pilisuk, "The Dark Side of 'Comprehensive Soldier Fitness'". The PT article stressed ethical concerns with the CSF program, particularly the fact that it constituted a research program, but that soldiers were not given informed consent regarding their participation, and no Institutional Review Board had reviewed the program.
In January 2011, Jason Leopold at Truthout published an investigation describing criticism of CSF from those who found its emphasis on "spiritual fitness":
CSF is comprised of the Soldier Fitness Tracker and Global Assessment Tool, which measures soldiers’ “resilience” in five core areas: emotional, physical, family, social and spiritual. Soldiers fill out an online survey made up of more than 100 questions, and if the results fall into a red area, they are required to participate in remedial courses in a classroom or online setting to strengthen their resilience in the disciplines in which they received low scores. The test is administered every two years. More than 800,000 Army soldiers have taken it thus far and more than 100,000 soldiers have participated in the remedial training.
But for the thousands of “Foxhole Atheists” like 27-year-old Sgt. Justin Griffith, the spiritual component of the test contains questions written predominantly for soldiers who believe in God or another deity, meaning nonbelievers are guaranteed to score poorly and will be forced to participate in exercises that use religious imagery to “train” soldiers up to a satisfactory level of spirituality.
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