Haven't read this yet, but I'm going to take a wild stab and guess that none of those "current studies" mentioned in the literature review were RCTs, because an RCT would entail deliberately exposing people with a predisposition towards paedophilia to CSAM, and that doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would ever be allowed by an ethics board.

If that's the case, then all these studies were observational studies, which lack the ability to infer causality. They can at best hint at directions to pursue for studies that can infer causality.

As a concrete example of the way that observational studies can go wrong despite good intentions: It was believed for a long time that paedophiles have lower average IQs than the general population. This was based on the observation that a larger fraction than would be expected of those caught and sentenced for sexual crimes involving children were of low IQ. Of course, a better explanation of this observation is that paedophiles with higher IQs are better at covering their tracks and evading suspicion.

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Saline9515 6 days ago | parent [-]

There are many publications studying how porn exposure shapes sexuality and our vision of the human body, especially in the young age, but not only.

By your logic, CSAM consumers would be "magically" unaffected by viewing this porn subcategory.

How convienient.

	▲	akoboldfrying 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Read carefully: I'm only claiming absence of (genuine) evidence, not evidence of absence. Until genuine evidence is available, either outcome seems plausible. It could be that consuming CSAM pushes people towards committing sex crimes, or it could be that it "magically" doesn't, the same way people playing violent video games are "magically" unaffected by doing so. ETA: An example of the inability of porn to influence sexual behavior is the plight of gay Western men in the 1950s-1980s. During this time homosexuality was absolutely demonised across essentially all of Western society, so there was ample interest from gay men in "correcting" their "errant" desires (this is not to say that all gay men felt this way). At the same time, heterosexual porn was widespread and easily available, though admittedly to a lesser extent than it is today. Given these forces at play, if it were possible for a gay man to develop an interest in having sex with women merely by looking at heterosexual porn, it does seem like there would have been large numbers of gay men who successfully "converted" to straight men. But AFAIK it is disputed that any such genuine conversion has ever taken place.