A new paper purporting to demonstrate that pornography addiction does not exist has been rebutted by a noted neuroscientist, Dr. Donald Hilton, M.D., in a peer-reviewed response.
The paper will be published in the March 2014 issue of Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology, the same journal in which the original paper was published, and can be found here.
In his rebuttal, Dr. Hilton, a neurosurgeon and renowned scholar on the science of addictions, criticizes the authors of the previous study for ignoring proven neurological theories and sound research practices. Hilton illuminates the weaknesses of the arguments by making clear the authors’ lack of research and their basing their theories on faulty assumptions.
“Pornography addiction is rampant in American society and commonly treated by clinicians in every part of the country,” says Patrick A. Trueman, president of Morality in Media. “Countless men, women and children are helped every day for this addiction by psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health counselors. It is, therefore, disingenuous, if not outright foolish, to suggest that pornography addiction does not exist.”
Trueman praises Hilton for quickly refuting the authors of the original study, Vaughn R. Steele, Cameron Staley and Timothy Fong with Nicole Prause, who gained significant press attention for their sensationalist theory. Unlike Hilton, none of these authors are neuroscientists, Trueman notes.
Morality in Media maintains an extensive online database of peer-reviewed research on the harms of pornography, including papers on pornography addiction, PornHarmsResearch.com, accessed and used by people around the world.
