Talk:Pedophilia

Discussion of Societal Perception in Lead

As it stands, there is little comment on how general society currently views pedophilia in the lead, as is written about in the "Society and Culture" section of the article. It seems appropriate to summarize this section in a sentence(s) the the end of the lead, perhaps commenting on the following topics: stigma, anti-pedophile activism, and advocacy Ruyter - talk 01:02, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

not able to be cured

The assertion of the fact that pedophilia is "incurable" is flimsy at best.I would recommend a re-evaluation of this point to include reference to at least two or more sources, or else support removal of the assertion, as being highly contentious without having merit of the general scientific community. 71.91.178.54 (talk) 06:50, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

I would agree. I will give seven days for objections before I make the edit. USN007 (talk) 06:53, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

And you will be reverted on that edit, per the fact that there is no known cure for pedophilia and the experts are clear that it is unlikely to be cured. We follow what the WP:Reliable sources, especially WP:MEDRS-compliant sources, state on the topic of pedophilia. Not your personal opinions. You also do not help your case by being a new, suspicious account showing up to this article out of nowhere to agree with an IP three minutes after the IP's post. Surely, you should have learned by now that WP:Socks do not get far at this article or any other pedophilia-related or child sexual abuse-related article on this site. And do spare me any talk of biting you as a newbie or falsely accusing you. I've been right on socks every single time regarding this article. Goodbye. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 07:01, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Always nice when a sock would agree with themself. DMacks (talk) 00:50, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Non-offending pedophilia section

There has been a lot a recent research examining men with pedophilia who self-report that they have not had sexual contact with a child. I wonder about adding a section to the Pedophilia Wikipedia page that provides an outline of what we currently know about pedophilia in non-offending samples and the characteristics that differentiate men with pedophilia who have and have not committed a sexual offence. Part of this new section could also focus on what we know about those with a sexual interest in children, without a focus on offending vs. not offending (i.e., basic sex research findings).Ian V. McPhail (talk) 23:50, 16 November 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ian V. McPhail (talk • contribs) 21:32, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

For instance, such a section could provide details from Mike Bailey's recent paper looking at sexual attraction patterns in men with pedophilic interests:

http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-47529-006

Bailey, J. M., Hsu, K. J., & Bernhard, P. A. (2016). An Internet study of men sexually attracted to children: Sexual attraction patterns. Journal of abnormal psychology, 125(7), 976.

Or, Kevin Hsu's recent paper on autopedophilia.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797616677082

Hsu, K. J., & Bailey, J. M. (2017). Autopedophilia: erotic-target identity inversions in men sexually attracted to children. Psychological science, 28(1), 115-123.

My point here is that the research on community (i.e., non-forensic) samples of pedophilic individuals is growing and will continue to grow over the coming years. To provide the public with up to date information on pedophilia, these research findings should be included on this wikipedia page.Ian V. McPhail (talk) 23:50, 16 November 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ian V. McPhail (talk • contribs) 22:27, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Good idea, I am happy to help by adding information about research, advocacy, and clinical organizations that work with or support this population. Jeremy Malcolm (talk) 22:46, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

There is no "non-offending pedophilia section." Nor should there be, since non-offending pedophile material is relevant to more than one section in the article. So having such a section would make it seem as though all of the non-offending pedophile material is in one section, when it's not, and it would likely result in redundancy by having some of the same non-offending pedophile material in that section and in others. As for the sources you cite, we should stick to WP:MEDRS-compliant sources. This means generally avoiding WP:Primary sources and certain other types of sources. Read WP:MEDRS and WP:Primary sources. There are already enough primary sources in the article that I need to replace with secondary or tertiary sources. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:28, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

From what I can tell, the advice is that "Primary sources should generally not be used for medical content". "Generally" is a broad guideline, but in the absence of systematic reviews, primary scientific journals are a good way of providing the available evidence. There is one secondary source, an article titled "Non-offending pedophiles" in Current Sexual Health Reports, that I co-authored that reviews *some* of this literature, but beyond this there are no secondary sources discussing this emerging body of literature. So I can't see replacing these primary with secondary sources.

One problem with this wikipedia article is that it conflates child sexual abuse and pedophilia, for instance, in the Cognitive behavior therapy section, the following sentence (and reference) "A 2012 Cochrane Review of randomized trials found that CBT had no effect on risk of reoffending for contact sex offenders" applies to sexual offenders and is not specific to the treatment of pedophilic interest. From a different angle than the one I originally presented, some of the work I can recommend would be to make this article internally consistent and make sure when discussing research, Wiki editors do not use research on sexual offenders that does not focus on or measure the pedophilic status of those offenders, to describe pedophilic individuals.

As well, my original suggestion, if a section to itself would not be appropriate, could be revised to be a suggestion that this emerging body of evidence be integrated into the existing sections. For example, the Personality traits section, one could include the following reference and describe the traits in non-offending and offending pedophilic men:

My overall point is that this article is focused on forensic research (generally speaking) to the detriment of more recent sexological research and conflates pedophilia with sexual offending against children. It would be a service to readers to update the page with this research, even if there are no secondary sources, and to remove instances of conflation.Ian V. McPhail (talk) 17:08, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Editors unfamiliar with the WP:MEDRS guideline and who are looking to add primary sources always look to the "generally" part of the guideline, which is why that part of the guideline is bolded and certain editors are looking to make the guideline stricter. See what WP:MEDPRI states about why we avoid primary sources when we can. Among other things, it states, "If material can be supported by either primary or secondary sources – the secondary sources should be used. Primary sources may be presented together with secondary sources." Now read the rest of the guideline, the sections that follow that one. I have always been for "generally" remaining, but you and others who insist on using primary sources instead of secondary or tertiary sources, including any review articles that might be available, do not help your case. I will not be surprised if the guideline eventually removes "generally," even though it's a guideline and not a policy. I'd only need to make one trip to WP:Med about any extra primary source material being added to this article, and the primary sourced material would be reverted. On top of that, we might get an editor being overzealous about the matter, forgoing WP:Preserve, and removing existing primary source material, although the topic of pedophilia is not as actively researched as a number of other topics. For less researched areas, it's why WP:MEDDATE states, "These instructions are appropriate for actively researched areas with many primary sources and several reviews and may need to be relaxed in areas where little progress is being made or where few reviews are published." Because of the slow progress in this field, this article has relied on primary sources, but we should still try to avoid them when we can. Because I am very familiar with the literature, I can replace enough of the primary sources with secondary or tertiary sources, and preserve appropriate content (per the WP:Preserve policy). I meant to do this earlier...so that when the time came to reject more primary sources being added, no one would be able to point to the article having existing primary sources or at least not many of them. I am open to what you want to add (without a separate "Non-offending pedophilia" section), but, other than when citing the DSM-5 or ICD-10, we need to try to stick to good academic book sources on the matter or reviews we can find on PubMed or on the TRIP database. If we are to use primary sources, we should try to make it sparingly.

As for conflating, there is no conflating child sexual abuse and pedophilia in this article. I and others have made sure not to do that. We even mention the conflation aspect in the lead, in the "Pedophilia and child molestation" section, and have a "Misuse of medical terminology" section. Regarding this and this, that is not a conflation. The first source is titled "Psychopathy among pedophilic and nonpedophilic child molesters" and the second source is titled "Facial and prosodic affect recognition among pedophilic and nonpedophilic criminal child molesters." Your claim that "child molester" is not in use in the scientific literature is not accurate. It's true that child molester is not preferred, but it's obviously still used by some academic (including scientific) sources on pedophilia. Like I stated when reverting you, academic sources on the topic state "child molesters," "child sexual abusers," "child sexual offenders," "nonpedophilic child molesters," and "nonpedophilic child sexual offenders." Some state "situational offenders." The text in the article stated "non-pedophilic child molesters exhibited psychopathy, but pedophiles did not" before I changed it to "non-pedophilic child sex offenders exhibited psychopathy, but pedophiles did not." Your wording of "non-pedophilic sexual offenders against children" is long-winded and unnecessary. Neither the sources nor the text is conflating child sexual abuse and pedophilia; the material is clearly distinguishing between pedophilic child sex offenders and nonpedophilic child sex offenders. The A 2012 Cochrane Review material is not an example of the article conflating pedophilia with child sexual abuse. The source mentions "disorders of sexual preference" in its first paragraph, and it's what pedophilia has been classified as before. That stated, since the source is not specifically about offending pedophiles, it and its text should be removed unless the source is clear that it's studying pedophiles and non-pedophiles. Otherwise, the Child sexual abuse article is a good fit for the material. I don't agree that the Pedophilia article is generally focused on forensic research. Well, okay, in terms of child sexual abuse, I get what you mean. We have one "Law and forensic psychology" section and cover the forensic aspect there. Yes, there is overlap in the article when discussing pedophiles and child sexual abusers, but that cannot be helped. The article is clear when it's referring to child sexual abusers instead of pedophiles who may or may not be child sexual abusers. You seem to have an issue with the article being so focused on child sexual abuse, but the literature on pedophilia is overwhelmingly focused on child sexual abuse. Like the "Pedophilia and child molestation" section states, "Little is known about [pedophiles who do not molest children] because most studies of pedophilia use criminal or clinical samples, which may not be representative of pedophiles in general." And like the "General" subsection of the "Treatment" section states, "Most categorize their participants by behavior rather than erotic age preference, which makes it difficult to know the specific treatment outcome for pedophiles." We can only follow the literature with WP:Due weight. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:22, 17 November 2018 (UTC) Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:09, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, Flyer22. Though I think we should be a bit more civil to stay focused on improving this wiki article. I read the secondary source Wiki material you linked, and I understand the intent of the guidelines. Though I think the research I am referring to lacks a secondary source that reviews this research. The nearest to my mind that would be a secondary source is the review article James Cantor and I wrote a few years ago, it's published in a peer-review journal. There is a reasonably sizable amount of new research into pedophilia that is missing from this wikipedia page, which I think is unfortunate and we should be open to revising this content, even if the majority of sources are primary. So the science I am referring to is (1) mostly primary sources and (2) without a secondary source (I do not think I am missing a review article, as you have charged). In this case, I would argue it is reasonable to include this research on the Pedophilia wiki page. One way forward is for me to start posting full references and links to these research studies here on the talk page, and then editors can look at these articles and we can decide where they fit in the Pedophilia page.

And just so it's clear, I'm a scientist who does a lot of research on pedophilia and sexual offending against children, see my researchgate page (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ian_Mcphail2).Ian V. McPhail (talk) 23:59, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

About terminology, I always like to advocate for specificity, even if the phrasing is a bit more clumsy. In all my publications I use "sexual offender against children". As well, the journal Sexual Abuse that published the article titles, "Facial and prosodic affect recognition among pedophilic and nonpedophilic criminal child molesters", since the publication of that article in 2009, has released its intent to use person-centred language. See here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1079063218783798 . This is not the be all and end all and mean this Wiki page has to use this language, but it does suggest that the term "child molester" is not favored.

With the Cochrane Review, I am familiar with it and it is mostly focused on the effectiveness of sexual offender treatment programs in reducing sexual recidivism. These programs are general treatment programs where the admission criterion is having been convicted of a sexual offence. These programs are not for pedophilic individuals, or even pedophilic sexual offenders, even though it is likely there is some unknown proportion of pedophilic sex offenders in each of the samples in this Cochrane review. Further to this, two studies looked at the effect of behavioral interventions for anomolous sexual behavior. In one of these studies , the majority of the men in the sample were exhibitionists or gay (15 out of 20). In the other study, 24 of 30 men in the sample had paraphilias other than pedophilia. In both these studies, the data for just the pedophilic sex offenders are not disaggregated and presented on their own (though I've skimmed through the results, but didn't see disaggregated results), so we don't know how effective these treatments were for pedophilic interest. Taken as a whole, this Cochrane Review can't actually tell us anything about the treatment of pedophilia itself and I would re-iterate that when we look at the details, I wonder whether it fits on a page devoted to pedophilia. And I just noticed you noted that this sentiment is included in the treatment section; as I point out below, making changes to the treatment section might be possible.

Instead, I think using this Cochrane Review conflates sexual offending and paraphilias (and oddly, even homosexuality), in general, with pedophilia, and probably of more value, the review leaves us no more informed as to the effectiveness of these treatments for pedophilia. Given this, do you think it should be removed to the Child Sex Abuse page? I hope the above made it clear that the devil is really in the details with this area of research. Happily, there are other review articles of treatment studies, recent ones too, that we could rely on. In addition, I know of one review article that will likely be out in the next 8-12 months. Also, I do think that this kind of slippage in language can be avoided and doing so might be a worthy aim of editing of this page. This might be another area of the Pedophilia page to work on: updating the treatment section somewhat to include only/mostly research that specifically includes only/mostly pedophilic individuals.

And last, my original suggestion, and one that I repeated above, is that there is a burgeoning literature that is not focused on criminal or clinical samples, so it might be high time to start including that literature in this page. This might help somewhat to ameliorate the issue you noted: that most of the research is focused on criminal/clinical samples, which is less and less accurate as more and more research on non-clinical/forensic samples is being published. Phew, that was a lot of writing, but I hope I've made some of my ideas and criticism clearer.Ian V. McPhail (talk) 23:59, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Ian V. McPhail, I thought that you might break up my comment. Per Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Interleaving replies, I ask that you don't break up my comments. As for civility, I don't see that I have been uncivil to you. Stating that you are unfamiliar with WP:MEDRS and that "you and others who insist on using primary sources instead of secondary or tertiary sources, including any review articles that might be available, do not help your case" are just statements of fact.

I understand what you mean about wording, Ian V. McPhail. But the wording you use does not trump what wording the literature as a whole uses, whether the literature uses it a lot, sometimes, or sparingly. There is no need to go with "sexual offenders against children" instead of "child sex offenders." I've already noted that the term child molester is not preferred. I have no issue with using "child sex offender" in its place, although I view it as an unnecessary change. And I do usually use "child sexual abuse" in the place of "child molestation." Also keep the WP:Conflict of interest guideline in mind, like James Cantor does when editing Wikipedia, since you are at times speaking of your own research. I've already stated that the Cochrane Review source and its material can be removed since the source is not specifically about offending pedophiles...unless the source is clear that it's studying pedophiles and non-pedophiles. I haven't read it, so I don't know. If you don't see that it's about pedophiles at all, whether it uses "pedophile" or some wording that's clear that it's talking about pedophiles as well, we can go ahead and remove it. But you also need to keep in mind that, like the Wikipedia article notes, "Little is known about [pedophiles who do not molest children] because most studies of pedophilia use criminal or clinical samples, which may not be representative of pedophiles in general." And "Most categorize their participants by behavior rather than erotic age preference, which makes it difficult to know the specific treatment outcome for pedophiles." Again, there is nothing we can do about this but follow the literature. Read WP:Due weight. We are not going to give undue weight to non-offending pedophiles, when they are barely studied. Furthermore, we only have their word that they have not offended anyway.

You stated that the effectiveness of sexual offender treatment programs in reducing sexual recidivism "are general treatment programs where the admission criterion is having been convicted of a sexual offence. These programs are not for pedophilic individuals, or even pedophilic sexual offenders, even though it is likely there is some unknown proportion of pedophilic sex offenders in each of the samples in this Cochrane review." But like you yourself stated "it is likely there is some unknown proportion of pedophilic sex offenders in each of the samples." And as mentioned by Michael Seto, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), including relapse prevention, is used to treat pedophiles. We know that most of the research on pedophiles is on offending pedophiles (meaning those who have commited child sexual abuse). Seto states that the evidence for cognitive behavioral therapy is mixed.

As for "a burgeoning literature that is not focused on criminal or clinical samples, so it might be high time to start including that literature in this page," I repeat that I am open to including that information, but we need to try sticking to good academic book sources on the matter or reviews we can find on PubMed or the TRIP database, or some other trusted source. If we are to use primary sources, we should try to make it sparingly. And there is no problem with waiting until secondary or tertiary sources are available. But, yes, you can go ahead and list a bit of the primary research here on the talk page and we can consider including it while we wait for secondary or tertiary sources to become available. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:52, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

I will start a section on the Talk page that is a list of references. And just so I'm clear, Flyer22, are you the moderator of this wikipedia page? As in, do you need to approve changes? Ian V. McPhail (talk) 17:56, 18 November 2018 (UTC) ____

References