Research justifying Conversion therapy bill ‘weak, limited, biased’

26th June 2023

Inherent biases, a limited sample, and a lack of additional empirical evidence significantly weakens the evidence basis to justify the so-called Conversion Therapy bill and may result in legislation that targets religious settings.

That’s according to Dr Karl Neff, the clinical lead at the National Gender Service (NGS).

He was responding to a claim by Noah Halpin, of Transgender Equality Network Ireland (Teni), that some people did not know they had undergone conversion practices and that they are used even in assessments for clinical healthcare.

Dr Neff said he had never met anyone who experienced this with a practitioner in Ireland.

He also voiced concerns about the Trinity College research justifying the need for the bill.
In that study, only thirty-eight people responded to a survey, seven were interviewed, of which only five claimed they had experienced conversion therapy in Ireland over the last twenty five years. Of those, most related to “conversations and/or interventions within families or religious settings”.

The research paper, he said, “is weakened by significant recruitment, selection, and reporting bias. The political impetus for the study likely exaggerates these biases”, while even the report’s authors noted that there is “no empirical evidence of conversion therapies in Ireland in published research”.

The endocrinologist said if the proposed bill followed the study’s findings it would focus on religious and family settings.