The New York Times’ Benedict Carey reports:
The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn’t matter how often he’d been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for his legacy…Now here he was at his computer, ready to recant a study he had done himself, a poorly conceived 2003 investigation that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change…Dr. Spitzer’s fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, as if choking on the words. And then it was done: a short letter to be published this month, in the same journal where the original study appeared. “I believe,” it concludes, “I owe the gay community an apology.”
…The study — presented at a psychiatry meeting in 2001, before publication — immediately created a sensation, and ex-gay groups seized on it as solid evidence for their case. This was Dr. Spitzer, after all, the man who single-handedly removed homosexuality from the manual of mental disorders. No one could accuse him of bias…But gay leaders accused him of betrayal, and they had their reasons. The study had serious problems. It was based on what people remembered feeling years before — an often fuzzy record. It included some ex-gay advocates, who were politically active. And it didn’t test any particular therapy; only half of the participants engaged with a therapist at all, while the others worked with pastoral counselors, or in independent Bible study.
…Dr. Spitzer in no way implied in the study that being gay was a choice, or that it was possible for anyone who wanted to change to do so in therapy. But that didn’t stop socially conservative groups from citing the paper in support of just those points, according to Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a nonprofit that fights antigay bias.
On one occasion, a politician in Finland held up the study in Parliament to argue against civil unions, according to Dr. Drescher.
“It needs to be said that when this study was misused for political purposes to say that gays should be cured — as it was, many times — Bob responded immediately, to correct misperceptions,” said Dr. Drescher, who is gay.
This was a very intelligent article that puts the entire Spitzer study into its proper perspective. It is a telling and compelling narrative that places a definitive period at the end of a long, and often troubling, run-on sentence. For his part, Dr. Spitzer should be applauded for doing the right thing. It is never easy, particularly for successful people who are leaders in their field, to apologize or acknowledge wrongdoing. But, this is exactly what Dr. Spitzer did and we at Truth Wins Out are grateful that he is a man of integrity and conscience.
Unfortunately, there are still slippery organizations, like Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX), who refuse to take Dr. Spitzer’s repudiated study off of their website. The good news is that by leaving it up they further erode their already tattered credibility and reputation by showing how blatantly dishonest they truly are.
Truth Wins Out will be filming Dr. Spitzer next week in Princeton, NJ. We look forward to sharing the video with our readers and members. We are hiring a professional film crew to ensure that we have broadcast quality video that can be used by networks. Obviously, this will cost a bit of money — and we can use your help because this expense is out of budget.
Please consider a tax-deductible contribution today to help us pay for the camera crew and travel to Princeton.
Have you noticed that social conservatives now pretend this recant never happened? They were ALL over it, for eleven years.
Using it as political fodder and abuse of rights for gay people.
Now that he’s reversed himself, they say NOTHING. Suddenly HE is not as expert or the last word as they touted him to be.
And they use, less and less qualified (and sometimes seriously bigoted) people to continue to defame and misrepresent gay people and misrepresent legit studies and research.
Tony Perkins is STILL allowed a lot of media time and attention he doesn’t deserve.
And we should know the reason why.
I think Robert Spitzer is a good man who made a really big mistake. I accept his apology, but it’s really up to the people who may have read his flawed “study” (and enrolled in an ex-gay program) to decide if they want to forgive.
No one knows what it’s like to be gay in America unless you’re a gay person. Spitzer seemed somewhat unaware of the absurdity of interviewing politically-connected ex-gay people for a psychological study. This “study” seemed to simply report the opinions of these professional “ex-gays.” It belonged in Time Magazine or Newsweek, not a psychological journal.
Bottom line? I think the man thought he was being intellectually open to an unpopular idea when, in reality, he was just really naive.
When and where in Princeton is he speaking? Is it open to the public? I live near there and if it does not take place while I’m at work, I may try to attend. Thanks.
Well, now that we know that the data was good but that Dr. Spitzer’s feels his interpretation was wrong, it will be interesting to see how the data will be reinterpreted.
Jeremiah, the data most certainly was not good. Phone interviews of what people say they felt years ago are not objective. The data was bad and the interpretation was necessarily bad as well.
I found an article by a Professor Dreger who goes into more detail of the events through her interaction with Dr. Zucker. Here are the highlights…
“In fact, Spitzer’s 2003 article went through numerous rounds of review, and was then published with 26 commentaries, to which Spitzer formally responded (as required in the “target article” system).”
“I (Dr. Zucker) said, ‘I’m not sure what you want to retract, Bob (Dr. Spitzer). You didn’t falsify the data. You didn’t commit egregious statistical errors in analyzing the data. You didn’t make up the data. There were various commentaries on your paper, some positive, some negative, some in between. So the only thing that you seem to want to retract is your interpretation of the data, and lots of people have already criticized you for interpretation, methodological issues, etc.’”
“Zucker concluded, ‘If Spitzer wants to submit a letter that says he no longer believes his interpretation of his own data, that’s fine. I’ll publish it.` But a retraction? Well, the problem with that is that Spitzer’s change of heart about the interpretation of his data is not normally the kind of thing that causes an editor to expunge the scientific record. Said Zucker to me, ‘You can retract data incorrectly analyzed; to do that, you publish an erratum. You can retract an article if the data were falsified—or the journal retracts it if the editor knows of it. As I understand it, he’s just saying ten years later that he wants to retract his interpretation of the data. Well, we’d probably have to retract hundreds of scientific papers with regard to re-interpretation, and we don’t do that.’
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fetishes-i-dont-get/201204/how-ex-ex-gay-study
Well, if there was a subjective bias in the data, I hope that the matter will be cleared up, and that this will not harm or hinder current and future research into this issue.