Ethical approval… Yes, especially for paedophilia (a Brit are ya?), the obtaining of ethical approval would probably be a monumental task. The basic ethical question as to whether the risks to the patient of the work can be justified by the potential benefits… I presume would have to be extended to the possible community safety vs. the potential benefits. I believe the potential benefits could be enormous and the potential risks could be carefully minimized with diligent efforts.

What an opportunity to study pedophilia though… more accurate data could probably be obtained through virtual immersion, where the natural actions of the pedophile rise to a level where data could have true meaning, and a better understanding of this sickness could be achieved. Where even the slightest new understanding could lead to actual help for not only the pedophile, but the world in general.

But I suspect you are correct about the shouting, screaming and burying of head in sand being the outcome of even the suggestion of such studies. What a shame…

To my knowledge, no, not yet. Let’s pick the really emotive one. Rather than skirting around what ageplay is, I’m talking about getting actual paedophiles, and letting them express themselves, including sexually, with adults in children’s AVies. Let’s get some hard data about if it makes them reoffend or not rather than scream, shout and bury our heads in the sand. There is clearly some merit to doing the research. I rather strongly suspect it would never get ethical approval though, which is a shame. It *might* make the paedophiles more likely to try and grab a child - but they’re actually pretty high reoffenders anyway and could easily be watched even more closely whilst in the study and afterwards - but it MIGHT relieve their desires and make them far safer to be let out into the community. Surely that’s a good thing?

However, I recently reported on a study of immersion and the Milgram experiment
Just how well do we engage in video enviroments suggesting that there is merit to studying things we can’t ethically study IRL, so perhaps there will be something down that line in years to come (even if the paedophilia one is a long way down the line).

Edited by Weirdharold to make Eloise’s referenced url clickable.