A colleague of mine, Joe Price, was a discussant last week at an interdisciplinary conference hosted by Princeton University called "The Social Costs of Pornography." The stated goal of this conference was to "assemble
leading experts in the fields of psychiatry,
psychology, neurophysiology, philosophy, sociology, law, and
political theory to present a rigorously argued overview of the
problem of pornography in our society and to make recommendations." They also had a number of scholars serve as discussants throughout the meeting in order to ensure "that the papers will be
energetically critiqued in order to promote a fair and in-depth
assessment of the issues in question." One of Joe's comments upon returning was that too little scientific discipline was (and has been historically) imposed upon arguments detailing the social costs of pornography. He has started an ambitious collaborative project in order to remedy some of these weaknesses.
The anecdotal evidence of the social costs of pornography presented at last week's conference was astounding. However, when asked for their data, many presenters were reluctant to share due to various reasons including proprietary interests and worries about the quality of the data. These problems have plagued arguments on both sides of the pornography debate. Joe's project, called Social Science Research on Pornography (SSRP), is trying to fix both of these weaknesses.
Their website catalogues past and current research on the subject, successful empirical strategies, solutions to empirical difficulties, and datasets for addressing questions on the subject. The subject of pornography is so emotional on both sides that arguments both for and against it are often founded on value statements and extreme examples. Joe's research tries to tie research on the social costs of pornography more to the data and current scientific techniques in order to strengthen the good arguments and trim out the bad ones.
One interesting project in progress is work coauthored with an undergraduate student entitled, "Dangerous Search Terms," in which the authors use PERL scripts to measure how many clicks it takes to get to a pornographic website from a Google search of common children's search terms. Another project, "Pornography and Marriange," tries to measure the effect of pornography on various measures of marital outcomes. In particular, the authors try to estimate whether pornography and marital intimacy are substitutes or complements. They use some clever instruments given their sample period, including the number of Post Office boxes per capita.
Their website catalogues past and current research on the subject, successful empirical strategies, solutions to empirical difficulties, and datasets for addressing questions on the subject. The subject of pornography is so emotional on both sides that arguments both for and against it are often founded on value statements and extreme examples. Joe's research tries to tie research on the social costs of pornography more to the data and current scientific techniques in order to strengthen the good arguments and trim out the bad ones.
One interesting project in progress is work coauthored with an undergraduate student entitled, "Dangerous Search Terms," in which the authors use PERL scripts to measure how many clicks it takes to get to a pornographic website from a Google search of common children's search terms. Another project, "Pornography and Marriange," tries to measure the effect of pornography on various measures of marital outcomes. In particular, the authors try to estimate whether pornography and marital intimacy are substitutes or complements. They use some clever instruments given their sample period, including the number of Post Office boxes per capita.
Sure pornography is bad, but did it really cause the Great Depression?