[Vision2020] Researcher apologizes for study of gay therapy

[Art Deco]

 May 18, 5:41 PM EDT

*Researcher apologizes for study of gay therapy *

By MALCOLM RITTER
AP Science Writer
   Science Veo

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     NEW YORK (AP) -- A prominent retired psychiatrist is apologizing to
the gay community for a decade-old study that concluded some gay people can
go straight through what's called reparative therapy.

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, formerly of Columbia University, now says he no
longer believes his work showed that.

For the study, Spitzer had interviewed 200 people who'd claimed some degree
of change. The "fatal flaw" is that there is no way to judge the
credibility of their accounts, Spitzer says in a letter he submitted last
month to a journal that published his work in 2003.

The work made headlines when he presented it at a 2001 meeting of the
American Psychiatric Association. One reason for the attention was that
Spitzer had played a leading role 30 years before in removing homosexuality
from the list of mental disorders in the association's diagnostic manual.

Spitzer's study was attacked by critics who questioned the reliability of
the accounts from the people he interviewed. At the time, Spitzer
acknowledged that he had no proof their stories were accurate, but said
several aspects of their accounts suggested their statements could not be
dismissed out of hand.

Now he says his reasoning was wrong, and that "there was no way to
determine if the subject's accounts of change were valid," he wrote in a
letter to the editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Spitzer, who lives
in Princeton, N.J., sent a copy to The Associated Press after a reporter
interviewed him about his change of heart.

"I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven
claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy," Spitzer wrote. "I also
apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form
of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that
reparative therapy works with some `highly motivated' individuals."

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