Her expert testimony was no longer accepted after the report of the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control, of which she was chair, was rejected by the "Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology" (BSERP) of the American Psychological Association. J. Gordon Melton has written that afterward, courts began to shift toward accepting the position held by the great majority of scholars studying new religious movements, moving away from the minority perspective of Singer and others sympathetic to her brainwashing claims. According to Melton, this had significant consequences later on, since it meant that brainwashing could no longer be used as a defense for the practice of deprogramming.