Unpopular Opinion

While I agree that studies would help, actually performing those studies has historically been very difficult. Because the first step to doing a study on pedophilia is actually finding a significant enough number of pedophiles who are willing and able to join the study. And that by itself is a tall order.

Then you ask these pedophiles (who are for some reason okay with admitting to the researchers that they are, in fact, pedophiles) to self-report their crimes. And you expect them to be honest? Any statistician will tell you that self-reported data is consistently the least reliable data, and that’s doubly unreliable when you’re basically asking them to give you a confession that could send them to federal prison.

Or maybe you try going the court records/police FOIA request route? Figure out which court cases deal with pedos, then figure out if AI images were part of the evidence? But that has issues of its own, because you’re specifically excluding all the pedos who haven’t offended or been caught; You’re only selecting the ones who have been taken to court, so your entire sample pool is biased. You’re also missing any pedos who have sealed records or sealed evidence, which is fairly common.

Maybe you go the anonymous route. Let people self report via a QR code or anonymous mail. But a single 4chan post could ruin your entire sample pool, and there’s nothing to stop bad actors from intentionally tainting your study. Because there are plenty of people who would jump at a chance to make pedos look even worse than they already do, to try and get AI CSAM banned.

The harsh reality is that studies haven’t been done because there simply isn’t a reliable way to gather data while controlling for bias. With pedophilia being taboo, any pedophiles will be dissuaded from participating. Because it means potentially outing yourself as a pedophile. And at that point, your best case scenario is having enough money to ghost your entire life.