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From: adam@mtund.UUCP (Adam V. Reed)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,net.legal
Subject: Evidence and Pornography Legislation
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Date: Wed, 17-Sep-86 18:45:11 EDT
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Posted: Wed Sep 17 18:45:11 1986
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Mark Terribile:
> If you believe that the evidence is not yet adequate to base policy on, and
> you fail to search for more evidence when the evidence that is there makes
> a strong suggestion, then you are showing your bias.

I think you are barking up the wrong tree. One of my areas of expertise
is the methodology of psychological research; and so I do participate in
the search, as an inventor of new methods, a peer review referee for
scientific periodicals and funding agencies, and as a consulting editor
of *Behavior Research Methods*. It is true that I do not actively look
for evidence that "pornography" is harmful, but that is because I prefer
to conduct research in areas where there is at least a reasonable
expectation of obtaining meaningful results.  On the basis of what I
have seen so far, research into the allegedly harmful effects of erotica
is much like "parapsychology": all the "positive evidence" comes from
inadequately controlled or fallaciously analyzed experiments; and once
adequate controls are performed and valid analyses are done all the
alleged evidence vanishes into thin air.

> .... at the very least, the studies show a reason for concern and
> for more extensive study.  They certainly do not indicate that we should
> abandon two centuries of legislative and judicial tradition ....

Now we get into questions about the ethical foundations of the law.
Legal punishment means depriving a person, at least temporarily, of the
rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  One of the ethical
foundations of western society is the presumption that no one ought to
be deprived of these rights without a demonstration, beyond a reasonable
doubt, of having caused harm to another person. Even clear evidence of
having transgressed a legal prohibition would fail to meet this
criterion, if legal prohibitions are instituted without requiring proof
- beyond a reasonable doubt - that the activity being prohibited is in
fact harmful.

Human sacrifice, judicial torture, slavery, and other traditions many
times more ancient than the prohibition against pornography, were
abandoned when found to conflict with the ethical foundations of our
society. As long as there is no evidence which would prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that pornography is harmful, a legal prohibition
against pornography remains in conflict with those foundations. It is
this conflict which lies at the base of attempts to manufacture the
requisite "evidence" through disregard for fundamental requirements of
methodological integrity.
					Adam Reed (ihnp4!mtund!adam)