This page is for journalists and other investigators who may have read assertions that Dr. Prause is a victim. Mere claims, no matter how vivid or how many of one’s friends echo them, are not evidence. True evidence is based on facts that can be verified. Much “evidence” that is published on social media is not admissible in legal proceedings because it is hear-say, irrelevant, conclusory, or otherwise not fact-based.
In situations where facts matter, Dr. Prause’s claims have not fared well. This page collects some of the legal victories over Nicole Prause. What works on her Twitter fans doesn’t cut it in a court of law.
In 2013, former academic Dr. Prause began openly harassing, libeling and cyberstalking Gary Wilson (for critiquing her flawed EEG study). Within a short time she also began targeting others, including researchers, medical doctors, therapists, psychologists, a former UCLA colleague, a UK charity, men in recovery, a TIME magazine editor, several professors, IITAP, SASH, Fight The New Drug, Exodus Cry, TraffickingHub, NoFap.com, RebootNation, YourBrainRebalanced, the academic journal Behavioral Sciences, its parent company MDPI, US Navy medical doctors, the head of the academic journal CUREUS, and the journal Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity. To counter her obsessive harassment and false claims, YBOP was compelled to document some of Dr. Prause’s activities on these extensive pages: page 1, page 2, page 3, and page 4.
While harassing and defaming others, Dr. Prause has cleverly cultivated – with zero verifiable evidence – a myth that she is “the victim” of most anyone who dares to disagree with her assertions surrounding porn’s effects or the current state of porn research. (See: Nicole Prause’s fabrications of victimhood exposed as groundless.) In the wake of her mounting legal entanglements and losses, her fabricated claims of victimhood have grown exponentially. Is she attempting to divert attention from her relentless harassment/defamation of her targets?
Are more legal loses in the offing for Prause? Three of her victims filed defamation suits against because she attempted to destroy their careers and ruin their reputations (Prause’s attacks on all 3 continue unabated):
Why haven’t Prause’s many other defamation victims filed lawsuits against her? No matter how egregious a false accusation, a defamation suit is not a practical remedy because legal fees can run hundreds of thousands of dollars for her victims yet cost zero dollars for Prause. This is because, so far, her unlucky insurance company has covered her defense costs in such suits. This is why Prause brazenly continues to defame me and many others (including the two who have filed defamation suits against her, Don Hilton and Alex Rhodes). She doesn’t have to pay a dime while bleeding her victims dry. Even if I or others were victorious, collecting damages and attorney fees is problematic. Only the lawyers come out ahead in such suits.
Nevertheless, some of her attacks have provoked legal action (and the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney hours). These proceedings have had definitive outcomes – unfavorable to Prause. The legal victories below are listed from most recent to earliest.
Activist porn researcher owes penalty plus court costs after her defamation suit fails
ASHLAND, OREGON: January 28, 2021: Best-selling author and public health advocate Gary Wilson has won another legal victory against sexologist and vocal porn-industry proponent Nicole Prause.
Prause filed a second frivolous proceeding against Wilson in December, 2020 for alleged defamation. At a hearing on January 22, 2021 an Oregon court ruled in Wilson’s favor and charged Prause with costs and an additional penalty.
Wilson’s latest legal victory comes on the heels of Prause’s failed multi-pronged attempt to censor Wilson’s website with the help of fellow mental health professionals. Her hostile campaign began almost 2 years ago when Prause applied for his site’s well established trademarks, including the exclusive legal right to control Wilson’s actual URL (“YourBrainOnPorn.com”). The trademark grab failed, and the marks were registered in Wilson’s name in 2020.
Meanwhile, in March 2019, Prause’s confederate Daniel A. Burgess registered a trademark-infringing domain name “RealYourBrainOnPorn.com,” which engaged in various transparent ploys to divert YourBrainOnPorn.com traffic to the impostor website. After many attorney hours, in January, 2021 Wilson obtained the RealYourBrainOnPorn.com domain name as settlement of allegations of trademark infringement. Earlier, in October, 2020, the impostor site’s associated Twitter account @BrainOnPorn was permanently suspended for harassment.
After his latest court victory Wilson said, “I am astounded by the calculated abuse directed at people who dare to speak publicly about porn’s harms.” He added, “The malicious censorship tactics of the porn industry and its sexology allies curb scientific and public debate. Just as Big Tobacco once did, they distract the public from the well-documented risks of porn’s harm to both users and those it exploits.”
Wilson hosts www.YourBrainOnPorn.com, a clearinghouse for the latest research, media, and self-reports on pornography’s effects and harms. Some years ago, he presented the immensely popular TEDx talk “The Great Porn Experiment” (~14 million views). Wilson has long critiqued questionable published research and public statements about pornography use. He is also the author of Amazon best seller Your Brain On Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction. It is available in multiple languages, and one edition has already been praised as one of the top non-fiction books of the last decade.
The www.RealYourBrainOnPorn.com URL has been granted to YBOP after its former owner(s), in apparent collaboration with Nicole R. Prause, registered and maintained the URL as part of a campaign to de-platform YBOP.
Specifically, Gary Wilson obtained the RealYourBrainOnPorn.com (RealYBOP) domain name as settlement of allegations of infringement upon his trademarks. The rest of this page documents the hostile campaign of Prause and her cronies, which began with an attempt to de-platform YBOP, followed by efforts to confuse its visitors, and finally used YBOP’s own trademarks to disparage it. (THE FULL STORY)
While Daniel A. Burgess registered www.RealYourBrainOnPorn.com, Prause’s numerous victims believe she orchestrated the content on RealYBOP and operated its social media accounts. Prause may deny involvement, but simple observation, RealYBOP experts’ correspondence, WIPO’s report, and considerable evidence point to her management of the social media accounts and realyourbrainonporn.com (evidence here).
Vocal porn researcher’s attempted restraining order denied as frivolous; must pay substantial attorney fees in a SLAPP ruling.
ASHLAND, OREGON: August 16, 2020: Best-selling author and public health advocate Gary Wilson has won a legal victory against sexology researcher and pornography proponent Nicole Prause. On August 6, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled that Prause’s attempt to obtain a restraining order against Wilson constituted a frivolous and illegal “strategic lawsuit against public participation” (commonly called a “SLAPP suit”). In essence, the Court found that Prause abused the restraining order process to bully Wilson into silence and undercut his rights to free speech. By law, the SLAPP ruling obligates Prause to pay Wilson’s attorney fees.
“It is ironic that the porn industry cloaks itself in First Amendment protections while porn proponents like Nicole Prause attempt to limit and silence criticism about the well-documented risks of porn’s harm to its users and to the public,” Wilson said after the Court ruling. “This is another important victory over the defamation and harassment endured by advocates who dare to speak publicly about porn’s harms.“
I believe her restraining order attempt was also an attempt to discredit me as a witness in the two defamation suits others have filed against Prause. It failed, and has now further discredited her instead, exposing her as lying for years that I was “stalking” her.
Important to note the initial judge denied Prause a temporary restraining order in February, 2020, when she filed it without notice to me. This was a loud signal to her that she had a weak case. Denial of the TRO meant that Prause had to inform me about the restraining order, and it was set for an initial hearing (which led to a second hearing, as Prause still had not served me properly).
For the next 3 months, Prause could have dropped the fraudulent restraining order with no repercussions to herself, and I would have been stuck with my attorney fees without much recourse. In June, partly to avoid being in Prause’s presence at the hearing scheduled for July, and partly in response to being unjustly accused of having threatened by her in order to suppress my voice, I filed an anti-SLAPP motion to have the restraining order dropped. At that point, she could only go forward. Court documents filed in my anti-SLAPP motion:
I filed my motion in part because Prause had begun slapping baseless small claims court ‘defamation’ suits on people, which require defendants to be served in CA. I was confident that she would serve me with one of her nuisance small claims court suits if I came to CA to testify for the restraining order hearing.
As it turns out, the judge combined the two matters, and both Prause and I were able to participate remotely (due to Covid 19). This spared me from going anywhere near her, thankfully. Perhaps its evident that, far from physically threatening her, I’ve been assiduously avoiding her presence. My August 5th, court filings responding to Prause’s July 29 declaration:
Shortly before the August 6 hearing, her own attorney tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from representing her. One of his reasons, according to his Declaration, was that she was attempting to force him to behave unethically, that is, to do something he could not do in good faith. We know from his filed document seeking a continuance that she had tried to make him submit a lot of inadmissible “evidence” (likely in the form of letters from her friends, and unsupported accusations), so we suspect he was referring to this.
Her attorney also asked to withdraw because she was apparently threatening him with suit because he wouldn’t do her bidding. He stated that communications with Prause had irretrievably broken down. This occurred after he filed her reply to my anti-SLAPP motion (and there was no further legal work to be done short of the hearing itself).
The judge decided not to delay the hearing, and Prause was represented by the firm’s of-counsel attorney, who did an excellent job on her behalf – although he had little to work with by the time all the evidentiary objections were dealt with.
Prause lied throughout her declaration. One demonstrable example is Prause falsely stating that “as a result of Gary Wilson’s actions, I have relocated many times”.
In tweets, interviews, articles, and court documents, Prause has repeatedly claimed that she constantly moves due to numerous stalkers breathing down her neck (mainly me). In her August, 2019 filing, Prause claimed to have moved on July 1, 2019 “out of fear of Wilson’s stalking” (note the date):
As with the Hilton court filings, Prause’s request for a restraining order contained no evidence that she had ever relocated her residence, let alone moved because of me. It would be very easy to provide receipts or leases, yet Prause failed to do so. Prause revealed the truth in her August, 2020 bankruptcy petition. She filed it to escape liability for 3 yet-to-be-tried defamation suits (Hilton, Rhodes, Minc), and avoid paying me the attorney-fee debt she had incurred (Prause was not actually insolvent, as she reported ~$270,000 in savings). This screenshot of her bankruptcy filing reveals Prause has not moved in the last 3 years!
Why is Prause finally disclosing the truth in her bankruptcy filings that she hasn’t, in fact, been moving her residence or business due to stalking? Well, in the filings she must provide all sorts of verifiable financial and personal documents to the bankruptcy court. If her fairytale of constantly moving didn’t match her documents, she could be charged with perjury. In contrast, there was no system in place to fact-check Prause in the Hilton suit or in my anti-SLAPP suit, so she was able to lie with impunity.
My legal victory comes on the heels of a complaint against UK-based SCRAM Media for publishing a story falsely claiming that Prause had received “death threats” as the consequence of a crowdfunding campaign by NoFap host, Alex Rhodes. According to a UK press release, the SCRAM story falsely stated that NoFap and Rhodes affiliated themselves with right-wing extremists (including anti-Semites); incited extremists to harass Prause; conducted a crowdfund that led to Prause being stalked; and filed a frivolous lawsuit in US Federal Court in order to stymie Prause’s academic research. When presented with evidence disproving those claims, SCRAM retracted the article, paid Rhodes substantial damages and legal costs, and apologized publicly, before shutting down entirely. (More below)
Prause is being sued in 3 unrelated federal civil lawsuits accusing her of making knowingly false and damaging statements about people who have raised concerns about internet porn. (See above.) In those cases, the plaintiffs allege Prause made untrue, defamatory statements accusing them of stalking, sexual harassment, and antisemitism, and claiming they were under investigation by law enforcement and professional licensing bodies. In each case, numerous men and women have come forward with sworn statements that Prause has also targeted them.
4) Beware! Spreading defamation can create legal liability
SCRAM Media relied on Prause for misinformation about Alexander Rhodes and NoFap. The outlet printed her lies. SCRAM had to apologize and pay substantial damages to Rhodes and NoFap. As a consequence, SCRAM unfortunately went out of business. Similarly, Prause persuaded colleague Melissa Farmer to spread defamation about US attorney Aaron Minc. Both the colleague and Prause have been sued for defamation.
On 20 January 2020 we published an article on scramnews.com entitled “Academic receives “death threats” from far-right after crowdfunding campaign to sue her.”The article contained numerous false and defamatory statements concerning NoFap LLC (‘NoFap’) and its founder Alexander Rhodes. In particular, the article wrongly suggested that NoFap and Mr Rhodes were affiliated with extremists (including anti-Semites); that they had brought a frivolous and vexatious defamation claim in order to stymie legitimate academic research; that they had incited extremists to harass and threaten the defendant in those proceedings (a Dr Nicole Prause); and that they had published misleading information about the campaign in order to secure crowdfunding.
We wish to unequivocally retract the allegations contained within the article and apologise for the damage and distress caused to NoFap and Mr Rhodes by the publication.
We acknowledge that what we published was wholly misleading and an inaccurate representation, both of the work undertaken by NoFap and Mr Rhodes, and of the defamation claim brought by Mr Rhodes against Dr Prause, and that neither Mr. Rhodes or NoFap have incited members of extremist hate groups to harass or threaten Dr Prause.
Mr Rhodes’ defamation claim against Dr Prause does not concern her research, but rather alleged defamatory attacks on Mr Rhodes and NoFap. The formal copy of the legal Complaint in that claim (issued in the US Federal Court) can be found here. We acknowledge that there was, and is, nothing misleading about the crowdfunding campaign associated with this litigation.
NoFap is a pornography recovery online platform which enables users to connect with a supportive community of individuals determined to reduce or eliminate pornography use and free themselves from compulsive sexual behaviours. Unlike many initiatives that have traditionally criticised pornography, Mr Rhodes’ website prides itself on being secular, apolitical, sex-positive, and science-based. We understand that it is used by men and women from all over the world, from a wide variety of backgrounds, religious and spiritual beliefs (or non-belief), sexual orientations and identities, ages, nationalities, ethnicities, and other characteristics.
We wish to apologise to Mr Rhodes, NoFap and our readers. and we have agreed to pay substantial damages to NoFap and Mr Rhodes together with legal costs in respect of the damage/distress caused by the article.
Scram Media Limited and two of its contributors have apologised and agreed to pay defamation damages to US-based NoFap LLC and its founder Alexander Rhodes after publishing an article on ScramNews.com titled “Academic receives “death threats” from far-right after crowdfunding campaign to sue her.”
NoFap runs an online pornography recovery platform that enables users to connect with a supportive community of individuals determined to reduce or eliminate pornography use and free themselves from compulsive sexual behaviours. It receives millions of visitors every month and has been covered by a wide variety of outlets, including CNN, The New York Times, BBC, Business Insider, Time Magazine, MTV, The Washington Post, and Showtime.
The Scram News article contained numerous false and defamatory statements concerning NoFap and Mr Rhodes. In particular, the article wrongly suggested that NoFap and Mr Rhodes were affiliated with extremists (including anti-Semites); that they had brought a frivolous and vexatious defamation claim in the US Federal Court in order to stymie legitimate academic research; that they had incited extremists to harass and threaten the defendant in those proceedings; that a crowdfunding campaign for the litigation had resulted in a defendant being stalked and their address being posted online; and that they had published misleading information about the case by wrongly suggesting that the defendants have ties to the pornography industry in order to secure funding.
Scram has now published a full retraction and apology which can be found here. This acknowledges that the publication was wholly misleading of the work undertaken by NoFap and Mr Rhodes, of the defamation claim brought by Mr Rhodes and the crowdfunding campaign, and that neither Mr Rhodes or NoFap have incited members of such extremist hate groups to harass or threaten the defendant. Mr Rhodes’ defamation claim does not concern the defendants’ research, but rather alleged defamatory attacks on Mr Rhodes and NoFap. The legal Complaint in that claim can be found here.
Scram Media Limited has agreed to pay Mr Rhodes substantial damages and his legal costs. It has undertaken not to republish similar false allegations.
Unlike many initiatives that have traditionally raised concerns about pornography, NoFap LLC prides itself on being secular, apolitical, sex-positive, and science-based. It is used by men and women from all over the world, from a wide variety of backgrounds, religious and spiritual beliefs (or non-belief), sexual orientations and identities, ages, nationalities, ethnicities, and other characteristics.
Commenting on the settlement, Mr Rhodes said:
“Our success in raising awareness about pornography addiction has resulted in us being the subject of a prolonged smear campaign orchestrated by elements who have close ties with the pornography industry, who have sought to falsely portray us as being affiliated to religious groups, hate groups, and extremists in an attempt to discredit us. Our website unites people from all walks of life to overcome porn addiction together. These elements appear to want to falsely controversialize the issue and misrepresent us to distract people from our actual views, the facts, and the emerging body of scientific research. Despite their ongoing defamation and disinformation campaign, we will continue to provide resources for recovering porn addicts.”
Her attempted trademark-grab was also illicit. To file it, she (falsely) claimed that no one but Prause had the right to use my URL, which I had been using for almost a decade, and which she had publicly been disparaging for years. She also had to declare that if she used the mark it was unlikely “to cause confusion or mistake, or to deceive.” Note that such a willful and false statement is punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both, under 18 USC 1001.
After her application failed, the trademarks were registered in Wilson’s name in 2020.
In a startling “coincidence,” Prause’s legal counsel for the trademark disputes was Wayne B. Giampietro, one of the primary lawyers defending Backpage.com. Backpage was shut down by the federal government “for its willful facilitation of human trafficking and prostitution.” (See this USA Today article: 93-count indictment on sex trafficking charges revealed against Backpage founders).
In 2013 former UCLA researcher Nicole Prause began openly harassing, libeling and cyberstalking Gary Wilson. (Prause has not been employed by an academic institution since January, 2015.) Within a short time she also began targeting others, including researchers, medical doctors, therapists, psychologists, a former UCLA colleague, a UK charity, men in recovery, a TIME magazine editor, several professors, IITAP, SASH, Fight The New Drug, Exodus Cry, NoFap.com, RebootNation, YourBrainRebalanced, the academic journal Behavioral Sciences, its parent company MDPI, US Navy medical doctors, the head of the academic journal CUREUS, and the journal Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity (See – Numerous Victims of Nicole Prause’s Malicious Reporting and Malicious Use of Process).
While spending her waking hours harassing others, Prause cleverly cultivated – with zero verifiable evidence – a myth that she was “the victim” of most anyone who dared to disagree with her assertions surrounding porn’s effects or the current state of porn research (See: Nicole Prause’s fabrications of victim-hood exposed as groundless: she is the perpetrator, not the victim). To counter the ongoing harassment and false claims, YBOP was compelled to document some of Prause’s activities. Consider the following pages. (Additional incidents have occurred that we are not at liberty to divulge – as Prause’s victims fear further retribution.)
In the beginning Prause employed dozens of fake usernames to post on porn recovery forums, Quora, Wikipedia, and in the comment sections under articles. Prause rarely used her real name or her own social media accounts. That all changed after UCLA chose not to renew Prause’s contract (around January, 2015).
Prause began to put her name to falsehoods, openly cyber-harassing multiple individuals and organizations on social media and elsewhere. Since Prause’s primary target was Gary Wilson (hundreds of social media comments along with behind the scenes email campaigns), it became necessary to monitor and document Prause’s tweets and posts. This was done for her victims’ protection, and crucial for any future legal actions.
It soon became apparent that Prause’s tweets and comments were rarely about sex research, neuroscience, or any other subject related to her claimed expertise. In fact, the vast majority of Prause’s posts could be divided into two overlapping categories:
Indirect support of the porn industry: Defamatory & ad hominem comments targeting individuals and organizations that she labeled as “anti-porn activists” (often claiming to be a victim of these individuals and organizations). Documented here: page 1, page 2, page 3, and page 4.
countless misrepresentations of the state of pornography research and attacks on porn studies or porn researchers.
This page contains a sampling of tweets and comments related to #2 – her vigorous support of the porn industry and its chosen positions: Is Nicole Prause Influenced by the Porn Industry? The page is divided into 4 main sections:
Please note: There is unequivocal evidence that the porn industry funded the sexology profession for decades. Sexology’s agenda still appears to serve the porn industry. Thus, the evidence on this page should be viewed in a larger context. See Hugh Hefner, the International Academy of Sex Research, and Its Founding President to understand how porn-industry friendly sexologists influenced the Kinsey Institute. Prause is a Kinsey grad.
Wikipedia prohibits sockpuppet accounts, but it polices them poorly. Not only that, even when it discovers evidence of sockpuppet accounts and bans them, it doesn’t always reverse the edits of the cheater. So, there’s a strong incentive for biased Wikipedia contributors to create new accounts to lay their poisoned eggs in the Wikipedia nest. “Crime” pays in this instance.
Not only that, Wikipedia’s editors zealously promote the sex/porn industry, quite often reversing any edits that would bring a more balanced and accurate perspective to related pages. Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales co-founded a company that focused on X-rated media. Yes, you read that correctly.
Research unfavorable to the industry is swiftly edited out. At the same time, cherry-picked research that gives a false impression of the expert consensus in the field is promoted, even if weak or flawed. The result is highly unreliable pages on harms related to porn and sex work, among others. Similar distortions have been reported by others, including journalist Sharyl Atkisson. Don’t miss her piece “The Dark Side of Wikipedia.”
Prause has taken full advantage of this corrupt environment. A list of 50 Wikipedia accounts that appear to be hers can be found at the bottom of this page. They are identifiable by her extreme bias, and by the fact that she often tweeted the same content she edited into Wikipedia at around the same time she made the edits. They attack the same people and organizations she attacks on Twitter, namely, anyone who dares to point to harms associated with the sex/porn industry.
Agenda-driven Wikipedia editor Tgeorgescu then protects her edits from deletion while reverting edits from anyone who tries to insert more accurate information. A few examples from Prause’s and Tgeorgescu’s current obsession, the Nofap Wikipedia page, whose error-filled content was largely created by apparent Prause sockpuppets. In this example, Tgeorgescu protects malicious edits by Prause’s sockpuppets (highlighted):
In this example, Tgeorgescu reverts edits containing more accurate information about NoFap or the research (highlighted):
Quite a tag team!
Wikipedia briefly curtails the escapades of “NeuroSex” and its aliases
At one point, Wikipedia itself banned 9 of Prause’s accounts that it was able to tie to her “Neurosex” account. That was some time ago. Yet she hasn’t curbed her creation of new sockpuppet accounts since then. Indeed, Wikipedia has since listed another 8 suspected NeuroSex aliases in addition to the original 9!
Even more definitive proof arrived when NeuroSex offered to Wikipedia private emails between Prause and officials at MDPI – on the very day the emails were sent. I know this because I (Gary Wilson) was copied on all these same emails between Prause and MDPI officials. She also clearly knew about the upcoming Retraction Watch article, which she successfully orchestrated. By the way, in it, she lied to Retraction Watch about nearly everything.
As with many of Prause’s Wikipedia sockpuppets, NeuroSex’s edits revolved around one of Prause’s long-term, ultimately unsuccessful, obsessions: discrediting and seeking retraction of the paper co-authored by Gary Wilson and US Navy doctors: Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports (Park et al., 2016). The batch of emails between MDPI and Nicole Prause started on May 22, 2018 with MDPI notifying all involved that one minor technical correction and an editorial addressing her unprofessional conduct would be forthcoming. This enraged Prause who responded with a string of demands and threats, followed first by false accusations and personal attacks, and then by editing the MDPI Wikipedia page to misrepresent the situation.
Documenting all the falsehoods and propaganda edited into Wikipedia by Prause’s numerous sockpuppets would be a full-time job, and rival the length of War & Peace. That said, YBOP has created a few sections detailing some of Prause’s suspected Wikipedia subterfuge:
Gary Wilson (Your Brain on Porn) Wins Second Legal Victory Against Sexologist Nicole Prause
Activist porn researcher owes penalty plus court costs after her defamation suit fails
ASHLAND, OREGON: January 28, 2021: Best-selling author and public health advocate Gary Wilson has won another legal victory against sexologist and vocal porn-industry proponent Nicole Prause.
Prause filed a second frivolous proceeding against Wilson in December, 2020 for alleged defamation. At a hearing on January 22, 2021 an Oregon court ruled in Wilson’s favor and charged Prause with costs and an additional penalty.
Wilson’s latest legal victory comes on the heels of Prause’s failed multi-pronged attempt to censor Wilson’s website with the help of fellow mental health professionals. Her hostile campaign began almost 2 years ago when Prause applied for his site’s well established trademarks, including the exclusive legal right to control Wilson’s actual URL (“YourBrainOnPorn.com”). The trademark grab failed, and the marks were registered in Wilson’s name in 2020.
Meanwhile, in March 2019, Prause’s confederate Daniel A. Burgess registered a trademark-infringing domain name “RealYourBrainOnPorn.com,” which engaged in various transparent ploys to divert YourBrainOnPorn.com traffic to the impostor website. After many attorney hours, in January, 2021 Wilson obtained the RealYourBrainOnPorn.com domain name as settlement of allegations of trademark infringement. Earlier, in October, 2020, the impostor site’s associated Twitter account @BrainOnPorn was permanently suspended for harassment.
After his latest court victory Wilson said, “I am astounded by the calculated abuse directed at people who dare to speak publicly about porn’s harms.” He added, “The malicious censorship tactics of the porn industry and its sexology allies curb scientific and public debate. Just as Big Tobacco once did, they distract the public from the well-documented risks of porn’s harm to both users and those it exploits.”
Wilson hosts www.YourBrainOnPorn.com, a clearinghouse for the latest research, media, and self-reports on pornography’s effects and harms. Some years ago, he presented the immensely popular TEDx talk “The Great Porn Experiment” (~14 million views). Wilson has long critiqued questionable published research and public statements about pornography use. He is also the author of Amazon best seller Your Brain On Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction. It is available in multiple languages, and one edition has already been praised as one of the top non-fiction books of the last decade.
More on Prause’s defamatory activity, malicious reporting/litigation, and close ties to the porn industry
Background: In 2013 former UCLA researcher Nicole Prause began openly harassing, libeling and cyberstalking Gary Wilson. (Prause has not been employed by an academic institution since January, 2015.) Within a short time she also began targeting others, including researchers, medical doctors, therapists, psychologists, a former UCLA colleague, a UK charity, men in recovery, a TIME magazine editor, several professors, IITAP, SASH, Fight The New Drug, Exodus Cry, NoFap.com, RebootNation, YourBrainRebalanced, the academic journal Behavioral Sciences, its parent company MDPI, US Navy medical doctors, the head of the academic journal CUREUS, and the journal Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity. (See – Numerous Victims of Nicole Prause’s Malicious Reporting and Malicious Use of Process.)
While spending her waking hours harassing others, Prause cleverly cultivated – with zero objectively verifiable evidence – a myth that she was “the victim” of most anyone who dared to disagree with her assertions surrounding porn’s effects or the current state of porn research (See: Nicole Prause’s fabrications of victim-hood exposed as groundless). To counter the ongoing harassment and false claims, YBOP was compelled to document some of Prause’s activities. Consider the following pages. (Additional incidents have occurred that we are not at liberty to divulge – as Prause’s victims fear further retribution.)
In the beginning Prause employed dozens of fake usernames to post on porn recovery forums, Quora, Wikipedia, and in the comment sections under articles. Prause rarely used her real name or her own social media accounts. That all changed after UCLA chose not to renew Prause’s contract (around January, 2015).
Prause began to put her name to falsehoods, openly cyber-harassing multiple individuals and organizations on social media and elsewhere. Since Prause’s primary target was Gary Wilson (hundreds of social media comments along with behind the scenes email campaigns), it became necessary to monitor and document Prause’s tweets and posts. This was done for her victims’ protection, and crucial for any future legal actions. As her defamation and harassment escalated Prause became embroiled as defendant in three defamation lawsuits: Donald Hilton, MD, Nofap founder Alexander Rhodes, and lawyer Aaron Minc, JD.
It soon became apparent that Prause’s tweets and comments were rarely about sex research, neuroscience, or any other subject related to her claimed expertise. In fact, the vast majority of Prause’s posts could be divided into two overlapping categories:
Indirect support of the porn industry: Defamatory & ad hominem comments targeting individuals and organizations that she labeled as “anti-porn activists” (often claiming to be a victim of these individuals and organizations). Documented here: page 1, page 2, page 3, and page 4.
countless misrepresentations of the state of pornography research and attacks on porn studies or porn researchers.
This page contains a sampling of tweets and comments related to #2 – her vigorous support of the porn industry and its chosen positions. After years of sitting on the evidence, YBOP is of the view that Prause’s unilateral aggression has escalated to such frequent and reckless defamation (falsely accusing her many victims of “physically stalking her,” “misogyny,” “encouraging others to rape her,” and “being neo-Nazis“), that we are compelled to examine her possible motives. The page is divided into 4 main sections:
While there’s no evidence of any of Prause’s victims stating that Prause receives funding from the porn industry, anyone might be forgiven for wondering if she is indeed influenced by the porn industry. The Prause pages on YBOP are just the tip of a very large Prause Iceberg. She has posted thousands of times, attacking everyone and anyone who suggests porn might cause problems. (Prause later purged her Twitter account of 3,000 or more incriminating tweets.) She has defended the industry at every turn, much as a paid industry thought-leader could be expected to do. Clearly Prause, who lives in LA, enjoys a cozy relationship with the pornography industry. See this image of her (far right) apparently taken on the red carpet of the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) awards ceremony.
“The XRCO Awards are given by the American X-Rated Critics Organization annually to people working in adult entertainment and it is the only adult industry awards show reserved exclusively for industry members.[1]“
One of the porn stars (Avalon) is from Australia. She tells Prause that it’s too expensive to ship a t-shirt to her. Prause asks Avalon if she would like to pick up her t-shirt at “the AVN.” The only logical conclusion is that Prause will be attending AVN awards, the AVN EXPO, or both.
Avalon tells Prause to have an amazing time at the AVN.
Please note: There is unequivocal evidence that the porn industry funded the sexology profession for decades. Sexology’s agenda still appears to serve the porn industry. Thus, the evidence on this page should be viewed in a larger context. See Hugh Hefner, the International Academy of Sex Research, and Its Founding President to understand how porn-industry friendly sexologists influenced the Kinsey Institute. Prause is a Kinsey grad.
The www.RealYourBrainOnPorn.com URL has been granted to YBOP after its former owner(s), in apparent collaboration with Nicole R. Prause, registered and maintained the URL as part of a campaign to de-platform YBOP.
Specifically, Gary Wilson obtained the RealYourBrainOnPorn.com (RealYBOP) domain name as settlement of allegations of infringement upon his trademarks. The rest of this page documents the hostile campaign of Prause and her cronies, which began with an attempt to de-platform YBOP, followed by efforts to confuse its visitors, and finally used YBOP’s own trademarks to disparage it.
Wilson challenged her application, which eventually failed, and the trademarks were registered in Wilson’s name in 2020.
Meanwhile, on March 13, 2019 (just a couple of months after the attempted trademark grab) Daniel A. Burgessregistered the trademark-infringing domain name RealYourBrainOnPorn.com. The RealYBOP site announced its birth in a press release, which deceptively claimed to have been issued in Ashland, Oregon where Gary Wilson, host of YBOP, lives, and misinformed the public about the state of the research on problematic porn use.
Take a moment to imagine the chutzpah and malice it took to register a domain name that encompassed an existing, long established domain name (YourBrainOnPorn) and then to add “Real” to it as if the new creation were the genuine website…and then to begin tweeting and engaging in other social media under this deceptive name!
The architects (Prause & Burgess) who masterminded this trademark-infringing strategy then resided in California, not Oregon. Were they deliberately trying to deceive people that the new site was somehow affiliated with Wilson?
To promote the new site, the creators of the imposter site set up lots of new social media, including a very active Twitter account (@BrainOnPorn), YouTube channel, Facebook page, and aliases for reddit and Wikipedia. A screenshot of the original RealYBOP YouTube channel is to the left:
Is it any coincidence that Nicole Prause, and her alias @BrainOnPorn, parrot “Sciencearousal,” falsely claiming that porn is overwhelmingly positive for nearly every user?
Before being banned, RealYBOP’s two Wikipedia sockpuppet accounts (Sciencearousal and SecondaryEd2020) inserted dubious links and deleted legitimate material about pornography’s effects. Here’s an April 14th, 2019 edit by a Prause sockpuppet:
More blatant deception: The trademark-infringing RealYBOP site itself attempted to trick visitors. The center of each page declared “Welcome to the REAL Your Brain On Porn,” while the browser tab falsely proclaimed “Your Brain On Porn.”
In an attempt to fool search engines (and snag visitors seeking for Wilson’s website), the photos on the RealYBOP expert’s page were embedded with code featuring Wilson’s trademarks, such as: “YBOP” or “Your Brain On Porn,” and “Ted Talk Porn” (referring to his well known TEDx talk). For example, go to this archived copy of RealYBOP’s “experts” page, hover over the image (right click), and inspect “View image” or “View image info” for the code/name of the image. Example below of Joshua Grubbs’s photo (Your+Brain+On+Porn):
Also, whenever a link for the impostor site was emailed it appeared as “Your Brain on Porn/YBOP”:
When a RealYourBrainOnPorn (@BrainOnPorn) tweet was retweeted its headline appeared as “Your Brain on Porn” and “YBOP (our most frequently used nickname)”:
We strongly suspect Prause was behind the Parler accounts as (1) a trademark infringing @NoFap account was created the day before the creation of the @YourBrainOnPorn (and NoFap has long been another target of Prause), (2) the Parler @NoFap account posted the same defamatory tweets as did @BrainOnPorn, (3) a Nicole R Prause Parler account also exists, which is very odd as Parler is considered a right-wing outlet, while Prause poses as being liberal.
Prause denies involvement in these trademark-infringing social media accounts. However, simple observation, RealYBOP experts’ correspondence, WIPO’s report, and considerable evidence point to her management of these accounts
While Daniel A. Burgess registered www.RealYourBrainOnPorn.com, Prause’s numerous victims believe she orchestrated the content on RealYBOP and operated its social media accounts (especially the very active Twitter account which, before it was banned for harassment, obsessively harassed and defamed those who suggested porn might cause harms or that the porn industry has problems).
RealYBOP went live April 16, 2019, yet it wasn’t until Wilson’s attorneys filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) that we learned that Daniel A. Burgess owned the URL (July 8, 2019). Incidentally, Wilson’s attorneys requested the WIPO administrative review of the apparent misuse of his trademark in the RealYBOP URL as a possible route to having www.realyourbrainonporn.com transferred to Wilson as swiftly and economically as possible. Surprisingly, WIPO declined to rectify the situation, so Wilson had wait until his trademark registrations were official before at last gaining control of the infringing URL.
In the meantime, Prause “weaponized” the WIPO decision. She issued a misleading press release and constantly mischaracterized WIPO’s decision on Twitter. She portrayed Wilson as trying unsuccessfully to steal “their website” (The irony!) This propaganda campaign became part of her mythology that he, and others, wanted to silence “them” because we were afraid of “their science.” For his attempt to defend his trademarks from blatant infringement Prause smeared Wilson as “vicious to scientists.” Finally, Prause repeatedly referred to the administrative WIPO proceeding as a “lawsuit.” It was not a lawsuit. In fact, it was an attempt to make further legal proceedings unnecessary.
As initially no one knew Burgess was the official owner of the RealYBOP URL, Wilson’s attorneys were obliged to send cease and desist letters to all the “experts” listed on his infringing website (May 1, 2019). A handful of the “experts” replied, and a few named Prause as the operator of RealYBOP. Here, for example, is RealYBOP erstwhile “expert” Alan McKee replying our C&D letter:
Here’s former Indiana University colleague and co-author Peter Finn replying to our attorney’s C&D letter:
In fact, not one of the RealYBOP experts stated, or seemed to have any clue, that Daniel Burgess was involved when they responded to the cease & desist letters they received. Clearly, her “experts” thought they were dealing solely with Prause. (Prause’s merry band of RealYBOP “experts”: Marty Klein, Lynn Comella, David J. Ley, Emily F. Rothman, Samuel Perry, Taylor Kohut, William Fisher, Peter Finn, Janniko Georgiadis, Erick Janssen, Aleksandar Štulhofer, Joshua Grubbs, James Cantor, Michael Seto, Justin Lehmiller, Anna Randall, Victoria Hartmann, Julia Velten, Michael Vigorito, Doug Braun-Harvey, David Hersh, Jennifer Valli and Nicole Prause herself.)
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) found substantial evidence of Prause’s involvement with RealYBOP
The WIPO decision caused an unexpected delay in the transfer of the URL to Wilson (until the trademarks were formally registered in his name). The important point here is that the WIPO panelist also viewed Prause as a leading controller of the site: “Panel finds substantial evidence that Mr. Burgess, Dr. Prause, and Liberos LLC share involvement in the control of the website.” Excerpt from the WIPO opinion:
The Amended Complaint also names Dr. Nicole Prause and Liberos LLC [her company] as Respondents. They do not appear in the Registrar’s WhoIs database in relation to the Domain Name, but there are reasons to believe that Dr. Prause is a leading person in the “group of psychologists and scientists” that is responsible for the Respondent’s website, according to the Response. She is the second-listed expert on the site, with her affiliation shown as “Liberos”. Two of the experts who replied to the Complainant’s demand letter said they participated at her invitation. The law firm that responded on her behalf to the Complainant’s demand letter is the same law firm that represents the Respondent in this proceeding. Dr. Prause “DBA Liberos LLC” applied for United States trademark registration of YOUR BRAIN ON PORN. The online database of the California Secretary of State shows that Liberos LLC is a California limited liability company, for which Nicole Prause is the registered agent.
The Panel finds substantial evidence that Mr. Burgess, Dr. Prause, and Liberos LLC share involvement in the control of the website associated with the Domain Name, as well as common interests in this proceeding, and there has been no showing of material prejudice to them in the event that the proceeding continues with Dr. Prause and Liberos LLC as named Respondents. See WIPO Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions, Third Edition (“WIPO Overview 3.0”), section 4.11.2.
Accordingly, the Panel allows the Complaint against multiple respondents as styled in the caption above and refers to these parties collectively hereafter as the “Respondent.”
As the arbitrator noted, both Prause and Daniel Burgess were indeed represented by Prause’s lawyer Wayne B. Giampietro of Poltrock & Giampietro. If Prause had no involvement in RealYBOP, why did her attorneys (who continued to represent her in connection with her infringement on Wilson’s trademarks) also represent Daniel Burgess?
The RealYourBrainOnPorn Facebook page listed Prause’s phone number as the contact
Before the RealYBOP Facebook page vanished, Nicole Prause’s phone number was listed as the contact number. We have blacked out her phone number below to protect her privacy, but Prause has listed this same number on various other pages she controls online, including Twitter. (Unredacted copies can be provided to journalists.) In addition, the Facebook page below describes the owner as a “scientist” (singular) rather than “scientists.” The latter would be expected if RealYBOP were a true group effort, as Prause (as its manager) has claimed.
“RealYourBrainOnPorn” YouTube channel initially identified itself as Nicole Prause (thereby also identifying Prause as sockpuppet TruthShallSetSetYouFree)
Upset by a less than flattering Rebecca Watson video covering the Rhodes defamation lawsuit, Prause used her own account and the RealYBOP YouTube account to argue with commenters under the Watson video. The RealYBOP comment reads as if it was written by Prause, in the first person (“my license”, “I won”), when describing her so-called victories in the WIPO hearing, UCLA complaints, and complaints against her psychology license. The RealYBOP comment also links to 2 court documents Prause forced Reason.com to add to this article about Hilton v. Prause. (The court ignored Prause lie-filled documents and refused to dismiss the case.)
Soon after her onslaught against Watson on YouTube and Twitter, the RealYBOP YouTube channel changed its name to “TruthShallSetYouFree,” which resulted in the above comment changing usernames:
Prause still uses her amended YouTube alias (TruthShallSetYouFree) to disparage and defame her usual targets, while spreading claims of her victimhood.
Ties to the sex/porn industry?
Pornhub was the very first account to retweet @BrainOnPorn’s initial tweet
Indicating a coordinated behind the scenes effort, Pornhub was the very first account to retweet the trademark-infringing Twitter account @BrainOnPorn! In return, the @BrainOnPorn Twitter account went on to directly support PornHub, including by targeting and defaming Laila Mickelwait and Exodus Cry. (Mickelwait’s petition to hold PornHub accountable for unconscionable and illegal content has garnered over a million signatures.)
It has long been clear that Nicole Prause and her colleague David Ley are long-time chums with many porn-industry insiders. We have always suspected that these players communicate behind the scenes, assisting the porn industry with its propaganda and attacks on Prause’s usual targets.
XBIZ admitted collaborating with RealYBOP on one of its hit-pieces
This January, 2020 XBIZ hit-piece by @BrainOnPorn buddy Gustavo Turner is proof positive that those who operated the RealYBOP site aligned directly with the porn industry. The XBIZ article below acknowledges “RealYourBrainOnPorn” as its source for lies about YBOP.
XBIZ claims that YBOP is “murkily funded.” Balderdash, as I (Wilson) have truthfully stated for 10 years that YBOP receives no funding or ad revenues, and my share of the proceeds from YBOP’s book go to charity.
As for the XBIZ/RealYBOP claim that YBOP is “unscientific,” see the main YBOP research page containing links to about 1,000 studies reporting myriad negative outcomes related to porn use. In reality, porn industry shill RealYBOP with its associated social media is far less scientific. This page exposes RealYBOP’s so-called research page as nothing more than a handful of cherry-picked, often irrelevant, papers (many are not actual studies), and its astonishing omissions.
The lawyer for Burgess and Prause also defended defended Backpage.com
Again, when YBOP challenged the new RealYBOP URL via WIPO, both Prause and Burgess were represented by legal counsel Wayne B. Giampietro. It’s worth noting that Giampietro was also one of the sex-industry lawyers who defended Backpage.com. Backpage.com was shut down by the Federal government “for its willful facilitation of human trafficking and prostitution.” (See this USA Today article: 93-count indictment on sex trafficking charges revealed against Backpage founders.)
RealYBOP Twitter viciously attacked TraffickingHub, the campaign to hold Pornhub responsible for hosting child porn and sexual abuse videos
While nearly every “RealYBOP” tweet supported the porn industry agenda, the tweets collected here leave no doubt concerning RealYBOP’s true allegiance – directly supporting the porn industry – especially PornHub (Mindgeek). For example, this image collects 5 of over 100 RealYBOP tweets disparaging and defaming Laila Mickelwait while defending PornHub. Laila Mickelwait spearheaded a campaign to investigate PornHub hosting videos sexual abuse and child porn, which resulted in this NY Times feature.
RealYBOP Twitter produced over 1000 vicious tweets defaming and disparaging dozens of individuals and organizations who point out the possible harms of using porn
Although RealYBOP purported to be a “science-based” resource, it never tweeted any of the many academic papers reporting harms associated with porn use. It also often misrepresented the cherry-picked studies it did tweet. However, the vast majority of its tweets served the porn industry by personally attacking people and organizations (who challenged the industry’s narrative) with insulting, defamatory tweets. These 2 pages collect many of these “attack dog” tweets. Others were so appalling that we omitted them.
Some RealYBOP experts are collaborating with porn industry giant xHamster to promote its websites and convince users that porn addiction & sex addiction are myths
Documentation of Nicole Prause’s intimate relationship with those in the porn industry is so massive that we created a separate page for just the highlights of what is known: Is Nicole Prause Influenced by the Porn Industry? A quick rundown with numerous links is provided in the next section.
More on Prause’s defamatory activity, malicious reporting/litigation, and close ties to the porn industry
Background: In 2013 former UCLA researcher Nicole Prause began openly harassing, libeling and cyberstalking Gary Wilson. (Prause has not been employed by an academic institution since January, 2015.) Within a short time she also began targeting others, including researchers, medical doctors, therapists, psychologists, a former UCLA colleague, a UK charity, men in recovery, a TIME magazine editor, several professors, IITAP, SASH, Fight The New Drug, Exodus Cry, NoFap.com, RebootNation, YourBrainRebalanced, the academic journal Behavioral Sciences, its parent company MDPI, US Navy medical doctors, the head of the academic journal CUREUS, and the journal Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity. (See – Numerous Victims of Nicole Prause’s Malicious Reporting and Malicious Use of Process.)
While spending her waking hours harassing others, Prause cleverly cultivated – with zero objectively verifiable evidence – a myth that she was “the victim” of most anyone who dared to disagree with her assertions surrounding porn’s effects or the current state of porn research (See: Nicole Prause’s fabrications of victim-hood exposed as groundless). To counter the ongoing harassment and false claims, YBOP was compelled to document some of Prause’s activities. Consider the following pages. (Additional incidents have occurred that we are not at liberty to divulge – as Prause’s victims fear further retribution.)
In the beginning Prause employed dozens of fake usernames to post on porn recovery forums, Quora, Wikipedia, and in the comment sections under articles. Prause rarely used her real name or her own social media accounts. That all changed after UCLA chose not to renew Prause’s contract (around January, 2015).
Prause began to put her name to falsehoods, openly cyber-harassing multiple individuals and organizations on social media and elsewhere. Since Prause’s primary target was Gary Wilson (hundreds of social media comments along with behind the scenes email campaigns), it became necessary to monitor and document Prause’s tweets and posts. This was done for her victims’ protection, and crucial for any future legal actions. As her defamation and harassment escalated Prause became embroiled as defendant in three defamation lawsuits: Donald Hilton, MD, Nofap founder Alexander Rhodes, and lawyer Aaron Minc, JD.
It soon became apparent that Prause’s tweets and comments were rarely about sex research, neuroscience, or any other subject related to her claimed expertise. In fact, the vast majority of Prause’s posts could be divided into two overlapping categories:
Indirect support of the porn industry: Defamatory & ad hominem comments targeting individuals and organizations that she labeled as “anti-porn activists” (often claiming to be a victim of these individuals and organizations). Documented here: page 1, page 2, page 3, and page 4.
countless misrepresentations of the state of pornography research and attacks on porn studies or porn researchers.
This page contains a sampling of tweets and comments related to #2 – her vigorous support of the porn industry and its chosen positions. After years of sitting on the evidence, YBOP is of the view that Prause’s unilateral aggression has escalated to such frequent and reckless defamation (falsely accusing her many victims of “physically stalking her,” “misogyny,” “encouraging others to rape her,” and “being neo-Nazis“), that we are compelled to examine her possible motives. The page is divided into 4 main sections:
While there’s no evidence of any of Prause’s victims stating that Prause receives funding from the porn industry, anyone might be forgiven for wondering if she is indeed influenced by the porn industry. The Prause pages on YBOP are just the tip of a very large Prause Iceberg. She has posted thousands of times, attacking everyone and anyone who suggests porn might cause problems. (Prause later purged her Twitter account of 3,000 or more incriminating tweets.) She has defended the industry at every turn, much as a paid industry thought-leader could be expected to do. Clearly Prause, who lives in LA, enjoys a cozy relationship with the pornography industry. See this image of her (far right) apparently taken on the red carpet of the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) awards ceremony.
“The XRCO Awards are given by the American X-Rated Critics Organization annually to people working in adult entertainment and it is the only adult industry awards show reserved exclusively for industry members.[1]“
One of the porn stars (Avalon) is from Australia. She tells Prause that it’s too expensive to ship a t-shirt to her. Prause asks Avalon if she would like to pick up her t-shirt at “the AVN.” The only logical conclusion is that Prause will be attending AVN awards, the AVN EXPO, or both.
Avalon tells Prause to have an amazing time at the AVN.
Please note: There is unequivocal evidence that the porn industry funded the sexology profession for decades. Sexology’s agenda still appears to serve the porn industry. Thus, the evidence on this page should be viewed in a larger context. See Hugh Hefner, the International Academy of Sex Research, and Its Founding President to understand how porn-industry friendly sexologists influenced the Kinsey Institute. Prause is a Kinsey grad.
INTRODUCTION: Burgess is now claiming victim-hood, yet he initiated all contact (Facebook, Twitter), posting numerous defamatory comments and eventually infringing on YBOP’s trademark by creating “realyourbrainonporn.com“.
I posted his home address and phone number on YBOP (a bald-faced lie).
I published “hundreds of pages of defamatory accusations” (Burgess provided zero examples of defamatory accusations). I only published this current page and two other primary pages describing:
I put “pictures” of his wife & family on YBOP. Not true. He appears to referring to the avatar associated with his defamatory Facebook comments – which I reproduced below and are still present on my Facebook page!
He received “multiple legal threats”. In reality, Burgess only received 2 cease and desist letters – both for illegal trademark infringement of YBOP.
You be the judge, is Daniel Burgess the victim or the perpetrator?
We begin with documentation of with Burgess’s one-sided reign of cyberstalking and defamation:
YourBrainOnPorn Facebook Page
Screenshots of Burgess posting numerous defamatory comments on the YBOP Facebook page (this is where I first encountered Daniel Burgess). Very important to note: as of November, 2020 Burgess libelous comments were still there. So any claims of me outing him, or his family, are ludicrous.
Link to the page I provided to Burgess (he had no comments): Nicole Prause’s Unethical Harassment and Defamation of Gary Wilson & Others. Note: Burgess is now claiming that the above screenshot of him harassing & defaming me on my Facebook page constitutes “doxing.” That’s a perfect example of DARVO – Deny the abuse ever took place, then Attack the victim for attempting to hold the abuser accountable; then lie and claim that the abuser is the real victim in the situation, thus Reversing the Victim and Offender.
By the way, ‘doxing’ refers to posting private information, which I did not do. His comments are public, and on the YBOP Facebook page.
Not long after the above tirade of false statements and defamation, Burgess went to his little-used Twitter account to spew a bunch of venom and unsupported drivel. Nine tweets in a row targeting me (Burgess has since deleted these tweets and changed the name of the Twitter account to @MyAscentTherapy):
On the “Marriage and Family Therapists” Facebook Group
Soon after Burgess attacked me on the YBOP Facebook page and Twitter, he set his sights on the 6,000 member “Marriage and Family Therapists” Facebook group (his unsupported claims about YBOP and the research are addressed in the next section). Eighteen replies to Burgess by therapists Staci Sprout and Forest Benedict are the bulk of what remains of Burgess’s defamatory tirade. Here’s an example of one of the many MFT Facebook page comments where Burgess defamed me:
It appears that Burgess was kicked off the “Marriage and Family Therapists” Facebook group for defaming others in the thread, yet he is now spreading his fairy tale that I initiated contact with him. The only so-called ‘contact’ I initiated was a Cease & Desist letter to Burgess for trademark infringement.
Burgess Creates Fake Twitter Account to Defame & Harass Me
On June 14, 2019 I posted the following Twitter thread in response to harassment and defamation from the “RealYourBrainOnPorn” Twitter account. (As explained here, the RealYBOP website and social media accounts are engaging in illegal trademark infringement and attempted trademark squatting.) On June 15th the dormant “Ron Swanson” account entered my thread claiming to have a background in law, offering me legal assistance:
The “Ron Swanson” Twitter account is demonstrably fake. A quick examination of “Ron Swanson’s” Twitter revealed it was fake and probably conducting a fishing expedition.
I suspected “Swanson” was Burgess because, out of its mere 20 tweets in 3 years, one linked to pictures of Burgess and his wife engaging in a CrossFit competition (Burgess’s primary Facebook page is CrossFit Dan). The “Ron Swanson” tweet with a link:
It’s no secret that Burgess and his wife met at CrossFit. He even created a Facebook page chronicling all this (update – in an attempt to hide evidence, Burgess deleted the page). Note: because Burgess is not only defaming me, trolling me, sending me threatening letters via his lawyer Wayne Giampietro, engaging in blatant trademark infringement, and related litigation, I have been forced to document his, and his alias’s, online behaviors.
The mystery of “Ron Swanson” solved.
Burgess continued to use his RonSwanson alias. The minute RealYBOP tweeted the SoCal ACLU letter (described on this page) “Ron Swanson” tweeted it four times, all at @YourBrainOnPorn. The “Ron Swanson” account hadn’t tweeted anything since his two June 15th tweets attempting to deceive me with his offer of sage legal advice. The four tweets:
Burgess no longer trying to hide the fact that he’s “Ron Swanson”.
On August 21, 2019, Burgess alias (@RonSwansonTimetweeted a screenshot of fraudulent porn URLs (of pages that never existed). It appeared under a NerdyKinkyCommie tweet ranting about me. Nerdy is a professional troll and Prause-collaborator who received a 7-day Twitter suspension for harassing me (entire saga explained here). RonSwansonTime was then joined in the thread by Nicole Prause and David Ley – what an amazing coincidence.
I then outed @RonSwansonTime as a likely Burgess alias, which resulted in “Ron” setting his Twitter account to “protected” (just more evidence that Ron Swanson is really Burgess).
Why would a fake Twitter account go private? To hide evidence?
In summary, Burgess is now fabricating stories that I initiated contact with him and “cyberstalked” him. As you can see, Burgess is lying. He is the perpetrator not the victim.
On March 23, 2020 Alex Rhodes filed his opposition to Prause’s motion to dismiss. His court filings contain new incidents & evidence, additional victims of Prause, greater context/background: Brief – 26 pages, Declaration – 64 pages, Exhibits – 57 pages. @BrainOnPorn twitter account is named yet again. Excerpts describing these new incidents of harassment & defamation:
RealYBOP constantly engages in harassment and defamation of those who speak about porn’s negative effects (over 800 such tweets in its first year). We wonder who’s legally responsible for @BrainOnPorn‘s defamation and harassment? Is it only Nicole Prause, or only Daniel Burgess, or maybe both? Or could all of the RealYBOP “experts” be held legally and financially responsible?
5) Update (August, 2020): In March of 2020, Prause sought a groundless temporary restraining order (TRO) against me using fabricated “evidence” and her usual lies (falsely accusing me of stalking). In Prause’s request for the restraining order she perjured herself, saying I posted her address on YBOP and Twitter (perjury is nothing new with Prause). I filed an lawsuit against Prause for misusing the legal system (TRO) to silence and harass me. On August 6, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled that Prause’s attempt to obtain a restraining order against me constituted a frivolous and illegal “strategic lawsuit against public participation” (commonly called a “SLAPP suit”). In essence, the Court found that Prause abused the restraining order process to bully Wilson into silence and undercut his rights to free speech. By law, the SLAPP ruling obligates Prause to pay Wilson’s attorney fees.
On to YBOP’s March, 2018 article countering Daniel Burgess’s defamation and assorted falsehoods:
Daniel Burgess defamed and harassed me on social media – regurgitating Nicole Prause’s usual set of lies and fabrications of victim-hood that she has spewed for several years. See these extensive pages for hundreds of documented incidents
Normally YBOP doesn’t engage the repetitive stream of defamation and ad hominem claptrap posted on social media. However, soon after Burgess defamed me on the YBOP Facebook page and Twitter, he set his sights on “Marriage and Family Therapists.” Because Burgess displayed his defamation before 6,000 licensed therapists and the YBOP Facebook audience, I felt it necessary to debunk his malicious comments (and his unsupported claims about the preponderance of porn research)
The eighteen replies to Burgess by therapists Staci Sprout and Forest Benedict are all that remains of Burgess’s defamatory tirade. It appears that Burgess was kicked off the “Marriage and Family Therapists” Facebook group for defaming me in this thread.
The current page contains several comments posted on a Marriage & Family Therapist Facebook by this Daniel Burgess Facebook account, followed by Gary Wilson’s responses. The Burgess comments are maroon and indented.
March, 2018: Daniel Burgess Falsehoods, Followed by Gary Wilson’s Responses
All of this is real simple: Lie and engage in ad hominem so that people won’t click on the links and see all the empirical evidence, which Burgess cannot refute. He has been trained well by Prause and Ley and their cronies, but knows nothing about the current state of the research or the neurobiology of addiction.
A comment to Daniel Burgess, on the Marriage and Family Therapists Facebook page (which contained a link to YBOP):
Daniel Burgess: thank you for your reply. Dr. Klein article is more relevant now than ever before. He still practice with the top researchers in sexology. Where as you linked me to Gary Wilson’s YBOP site. Gary is not only completely unknowledgeable about the topic. He has lied repeatably, misrepresents himself, his “credentials” and stalks women on line. Gary is a fraud, even the CBC identified him as a fraud. He lists hundreds of studies on his site proclaiming how it proves addiction like cocaine. But NOT research says such a thing. The man is delusional. Propaganda at best, potentially a case of malpractice diagnosis people outside of the dsm.
GARY WILSON’S RESPONSE:
1) “GARY MISREPRESENTS HIMSELF”: I have never lied, and have never misrepresented myself. Burgess is getting his talking points from Ley & Prause, who also evade substance and engage in ad hominem and untruths. Prause regularly says that I called myself a professor, and she posts a screenshot from a defunct website, with which I never had contact, and whose hosts incorrectly called me a professor. See documentation here: Prause falsely claims that Wilson has misrepresented his credentials. (Others have mistakenly called me a psychologist, a neuroscientist, etc. That is beyond my control.) My description of myself has always been here, and has not changed – https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/about-us
2) “STALKS WOMEN ONLINE”: I have never stalked women online or offline. There is zero actual evidence for this libelous claim by Burgess or Prause, just as there is no evidence that Prause has a restraining order against me, or that she has filed police reports about me. These fabrications are addressed here, with many others:
In reality, it is Prause who has engaged in cyber-stalking, defamation and harassment of me and many others (over 7 years running). Several sections from the above pages chronicle dozens of usernames Prause employed to post comments on porn recovery forums. She did this to harass & libel me and to argue with men who are trying to quit porn or recover from porn-induced ED. A few such examples:
3) LISTS OF STUDIES: Burgess ignores the peer-reviewed studies listed on that page. All the studies on YBOP are there for everyone to see. None have been mischaracterized. In my lists, all the studies contain excerpts and have links to the original papers. Burgess needs to take on their substance. Here are the lists:
Porn/sex addiction? This page lists 55 neuroscience-based studies (MRI, fMRI, EEG, neuropsychological, hormonal). They provide strong support for the addiction model as their findings mirror the neurological findings reported in substance addiction studies.
The real experts’ opinions on porn/sex addiction? This list contains 29 recent literature reviews & commentaries by some of the top neuroscientists in the world. All support the addiction model.
The goal of this review was to synthesize empirical investigations testing effects of media sexualization. The focus was on research published in peer-reviewed, English-language journals between 1995 and 2015. A total of 109 publications that contained 135 studies were reviewed. The findings provided consistent evidence that both laboratory exposure and regular, everyday exposure to this content are directly associated with a range of consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater self-objectification, greater support of sexist beliefs and of adversarial sexual beliefs, and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women. Moreover, experimental exposure to this content leads both women and men to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity.
22 studies from 7 different countries were analyzed. Consumption was associated with sexual aggression in the United States and internationally, among males and females, and in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Associations were stronger for verbal than physical sexual aggression, although both were significant. The general pattern of results suggested that violent content may be an exacerbating factor.
Increased access to the Internet by adolescents has created unprecedented opportunities for sexual education, learning, and growth. Conversely, the risk of harm that is evident in the literature has led researchers to investigate adolescent exposure to online pornography in an effort to elucidate these relationships. Collectively, these studies suggest that youth who consume pornography may develop unrealistic sexual values and beliefs. Among the findings, higher levels of permissive sexual attitudes, sexual preoccupation, and earlier sexual experimentation have been correlated with more frequent consumption of pornography…. Nevertheless, consistent findings have emerged linking adolescent use of pornography that depicts violence with increased degrees of sexually aggressive behavior. The literature does indicate some correlation between adolescents’ use of pornography and self-concept. Girls report feeling physically inferior to the women they view in pornographic material, while boys fear they may not be as virile or able to perform as the men in these media. Adolescents also report that their use of pornography decreased as their self-confidence and social development increase. Additionally, research suggests that adolescents who use pornography, especially that found on the Internet, have lower degrees of social integration, increases in conduct problems, higher levels of delinquent behavior, higher incidence of depressive symptoms, and decreased emotional bonding with caregivers.
NOTE: Nicole Prause’s maiden tweet for her new Twitter account was about Gary Wilson and the CBC interview. I can’t link to the tweet, as Prause’s original Twitter account was permanently suspended for harassing Todd Love, PsyD, JD, whose review of the literature dared to criticize her work. On December 18th & 19th “RealScience” posted several similar, equally misleading comments as the one below on sites that mentioned Gary Wilson (see several more posts on December 18th & 19th by “RealScience” or “Real Scientist”).
NOTE2: Prause has targeted me and many others over the last few years, including researchers, medical doctors, therapists, psychologists, colleagues from her short stint at UCLA, a UK charity, men in recovery, a TIME magazine editor, several professors, IITAP, SASH, Fight The New Drug, Exodus Cry, the academic journal Behavioral Sciences, its parent company MDPI, the head of the academic journal CUREUS, and the journal Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity (these 2 pages provide extensive documentation of said behaviors: page 1, page 2, page 3, and page 4
NOTE: Even though YBOP never says that cocaine and meth are “just like porn”, sexual arousal and addictive drugs share similar neurological mechanisms and hormonal changes (which differ from other universal natural rewards, such as food and water):
Sexual arousal and addictive drugs activate the exact same reward circuit nerve cells. In contrast, there’s only a small percentage of nerve-cell activation overlap between addictive drugs and other natural rewards such as food or water. Turning on the same nerve cells that make sexual stimulation so compelling helps explain why meth, cocaine, and heroin can be so addictive.
Interestingly, heroin addicts often claim that shooting up “feels like an orgasm”. Supporting their experience, ejaculation mimics the effects of heroin addiction on the same reward circuit nerve cells. Specifically, ejaculation shrinks the same dopamine producing nerve cells that shrink with chronic heroin use. This doesn’t mean sex is bad. It simply informs us that addictive drugs hijack the exact same mechanisms that urge us back into the bedroom for a romp.
Unlike other non-drug rewards (yummy food or sugar), but similar to drugs of abuse, sexual experience leads to a long-lasting changes in the numbers and types of reward center glutamate receptors. Glutamate is the main neurotransmitter relaying information from key brain regions to the reward center. These neuroadaptations make the reward center far more sensitive to sights, sounds, thoughts or memories associated potential sexual activity.
In addition, both sex and drug use lead to the accumulation of DeltaFosB, a protein that activates genes involved with addiction. The molecular changes it generates are nearly identical for both sexual conditioning and chronic use of drugs. Whether it’s sex or drugs of abuse, high levels of DeltaFosB rewire the brain to crave “IT”, whatever “IT” is. Addictive drugs not only hijack the precise nerve cells activated during sexual arousal, they co-opt the same learning mechanisms that evolved to make us desire sexual activity.
While far too complex to elucidate in detail, multiple temporary neurological and hormonal changes occur with orgasm that do not occur with any other natural rewards. These include decreased brain androgen receptors, increased estrogen receptors, increased hypothalamic enkephalins, and increased blood levels of oxytocin and prolactin.
Thus, familiar talking points such as this actual comment fall apart: “Well, lots of activities raise dopamine, so internet porn is no more addictive than watching sunsets or playing golf.” That’s a quote from an academic sexologist (with a very superficial understanding). Similarly, in sexologist Marty Klein’s reply to a Zimbardo & Wilson article he claimed that the brain response to watching porn is no different than watching a sunset:
“Besides, our brain responds in this same observable way when we cuddle a grandchild or enjoy a sunset.”
The Marty Klein claim was long ago tested and debunked, in a 2000 fMRI study: “Cue-induced cocaine craving: neuroanatomical specificity for drug users and drug stimuli. The study had cocaine addicts and healthy controls view films of: 1) individuals smoking crack cocaine, 2) outdoor nature scenes, and 3) explicit sexual content. The results: cocaine addicts had nearly identical brain activation patterns when viewing porn and viewing cues related to their addiction. (Incidentally, both cocaine addicts and healthy controls had the same brain activation patterns for porn.) However, for both the addicts and controls, brain activation patterns when viewing nature scenes were completely different from the patterns when viewing for porn. Goodbye silly talking point!
Daniel Burgess: Let me give just one example of Gary’s thousands of misleading, misread scientific “findings”. In the highly over used, misquoted and misunderstood “Voon” research “,Neural Correlates of Sexual Cue Reactivity in Individuals with and without Compulsive Sexual Behaviors” Gary recklessly reports, conflates and concules porn is like or a drugs, or rather “users react to porn cues in the same way that drug addicts react to drug cues.” ; “The long-awaited Valerie Voon study highlighted in the UK documentary “Porn on the Brain” is finally out. As expected, Cambridge University researchers found that compulsive porn users react to porn cues in the same way that drug addicts react to drug cues. Link to full study – “Neural Correlates of Sexual Cue Reactivity in Individuals with and without Compulsive Sexual Behaviours (2014)“
Interview of Voon: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10962885/Love-is-the-drug-scientists-find.html
‘In many ways, they show similarities in their behaviour to patients with drug addictions. We wanted to see if these similarities were reflected in brain activity, too. ”There are clear differences in brain activity between patients who have compulsive sexual behaviour and healthy volunteers. These differences mirror those of drug addicts.”
From the Voon study:
“Drug-cue-reactivity and craving studies of nicotine, cocaine and alcohol implicate networks including the ventral striatum, dACC and amygdala [13]. In the current study, these regions were activated during viewing of sexually explicit materials across the groups with and without CSB. The observation of stronger activations of these regions in CSB versus healthy volunteer participants is similar to findings observed for substance cues in substance addictions, suggesting neurobiological similarities across the disorders.”
The second Valerie Voon CSB study summarizes the findings of the first two Cambridge University studies:
Our findings of enhanced attentional bias… suggest possible overlaps with enhanced attentional bias observed in studies of drug cues in disorders of addictions. These findings converge with recent findings of neural reactivity to sexually explicit cues in CSB subjects in a network similar to that implicated in drug-cue-reactivity studies and provide support for incentive motivation theories of addiction underlying the aberrant response to sexual cues in CSB subjects This finding dovetails with our recent observation that sexually explicit videos were associated with greater activity in a neural network similar to that observed in drug-cue-reactivity studies. Greater desire or wanting rather than liking was further associated with activity in this neural network. These studies together provide support for an incentive motivation theory of addiction underlying the aberrant response towards sexual cues in CSB.
With the release of DSM-5, gambling disorder was reclassified with substance use disorders. This change challenged beliefs that addiction occurred only by ingesting of mind-altering substances and has significant implications for policy, prevention and treatment strategies. Data suggest that excessive engagement in other behaviors (e.g. gaming, sex, compulsive shopping) may share clinical, genetic, neurobiological and phenomenological parallels with substance addictions……
Overlapping features exist between CSB and substance use disorders. Common neurotransmitter systems may contribute to CSB and substance use disorders, and recent neuroimaging studies highlight similarities relating to craving and attentional biases. Similar pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments may be applicable to CSB and substance addictions
As all can see, Burgess simply lied.
Also, why is Burgess obsessed only with Voon et al., 2014? Why does Daniel Burgess ignore the other 52 neuroscience-based studies (MRI, fMRI, EEG, neuropsychological, hormonal) listed on YBOP’s brain studies page? (all 52 provide strong support for the addiction model as their findings mirror the neurological findings reported in substance addiction studies). Probably because Burgess is unaware that the other 52 neurological studies exist, because Prause appears to be spoon feeding him all his talking points.
Daniel Burgess: In another post Gary literally says “Porn is as addictive as meth.” and watch porn will cause you to rape. Using some random rape graph that has nothing to do with porn in any way. (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=54214.0)
GARY WILSON: The page Burgess links to was not posted by me. I have never seen that post or that website until now. Burgess’s fake “Gary Wilson” has only one bizarre post. Important to note that Burgess never links to my site – because YBOP has never said that “Porn is as addictive as meth.” Burgess is once again lying.
Who supplied him with the fake post by a fake “Gary Wilson?” Prause scours the web for anything about me. For example, two weeks ago Prause placed my Southern Oregon University employment documents (along with multiple libelous claims about them) on Quora, Twitter, and on an adult industry website. She falsely claimed I was fired. She was able to create that illusion due to redacted information in the documents. Here’s the documentation of everything that occurred, including Prause placing a libelous story on a porn industry website: Nicole Prause & David Ley libelous claim that Gary Wilson was fired from Southern Oregon University
The documents were removed from Quora, and Prause permanently banned. Twitter banned her for one day and gave her a warning. The porn site has since removed the libelous article. See:
Daniel Burgess: Compulsive porn users craved porn (greater wanting), but did not have higher sexual desire (liking) than controls. This finding aligns perfectly with the current model of addiction, and refutes the theory that “higher sexual desire” causes compulsive porn use. Drug addicts are thought to be driven to seek their drug because they want – rather than enjoy – it. This abnormal process is known as incentive motivation, which is a hallmark of addiction disorders.” Submitted by admin on Thu, 07/10/2014 – 16:09
GARY WILSON: My description of Voon et al., 2014 was perfectly accurate. Voon said the same. From her study:
Compared to healthy volunteers, CSB subjects had greater subjective sexual desire or wanting to explicit cues and had greater liking scores to erotic cues, thus demonstrating a dissociation between wanting and liking.CSB subjects also had greater impairments of sexual arousal and erectile difficulties in intimate relationships but not with sexually explicit materials highlighting that the enhanced desire scores were specific to the explicit cues and not generalized heightened sexual desire.
Our findings focusing on CSB in the general population similarly dove tail with incentive motivation theories emphasizing aberrant wanting or motivation towards the drug or sexual cue, but not of ‘liking’ or hedonic tone[12].
As for Voon’s study countering high desire, her subjects scored lower on the ASEX, and 11 of them had trouble being aroused without watching porn. I said this because Prause falsely claimed that her 2013 EEG study supported higher desire: Sexual Desire, not Hypersexuality, is Related to Neurophysiological Responses Elicited by Sexual Images (Steele et al., 2013). In reality, Steele et al., 2013 claim to have found only on ea single statistically significant correlation among all the data gathered:
“Larger P300 amplitude differences to pleasant sexual stimuli, relative to neutral stimuli, was negativelyrelated to measures of sexual desire, but not related to measures of hypersexuality.”
Translation: Negatively means lower desire. Individuals with greater cue-reactivity to porn had lower desire to have sex with a partner (but not lower desire to masturbate). To put another way – individuals with more brain activation and cravings for porn would rather masturbate to porn than have sex with a real person. Shockingly, study spokesperson Nicole Prause claimed that porn users merely had “high libido,” yet the results of the study say the exact opposite (subjects’ desire for partnered sex was dropping in relation to their porn use). Eight peer-reviewed papers explain the truth: Peer-reviewed critiques of Steele et al., 2013. Also see an extensive YBOP critique.
Daniel Burgess The actual research says this in its conclusion; “These findings suggest overlaps in networks underlying disorders of pathological consumption of drugs and natural rewards. While this study may suggest overlaps with substance-use disorders, further clinical studies are required to determine whether CSB should be categorized as an impulse-control disorder, within an obsessive-compulsive spectrum or as a behavioural addiction.”
GARY WILSON: That’s what cautious scientists do (unlike Prause with her unsupported claims, such as her claim that she “debunked the porn addiction model” with a single flawed study). But that does not negate Valerie Voon’s findings in 2014, or her future conclusions. Important to note that 36 neurological studies have since been published, including 4 more by Valerie Voon. All report findings that mirror those seen in substance addition studies.
Research into the neurobiology of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder has generated findings relating to attentional biases, incentive salience attributions, and brain-based cue reactivity that suggest substantial similarities with addictions. Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder is being proposed as an impulse-control disorder in ICD-11, consistent with a proposed view that craving, continued engagement despite adverse consequences, compulsive engagement, and diminished control represent core features of impulse-control disorders. This view might have been appropriate for some DSM-IV impulse-control disorders, specifically pathological gambling. However, these elements have long been considered central to addictions, and in the transition from DSM-IV to DSM-5, the category of Impulse Control Disorders Not Elsewhere Classified was restructured, with pathological gambling renamed and reclassified as an addictive disorder. At present, the ICD-11 beta draft site lists the impulse-control disorders, and includes compulsive sexual behaviour disorder, pyromania, kleptomania, and intermittent explosive disorder.
Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder seems to fit well with non-substance addictive disorders proposed for ICD-11, consistent with the narrower term of sex addiction currently proposed for compulsive sexual behaviour disorder on the ICD-11 draft website. We believe that classification of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder as an addictive disorder is consistent with recent data and might benefit clinicians, researchers, and individuals suffering from and personally affected by this disorder.
Daniel Burgess Furthermore Voon, the lead researcher is troubled by the interpretation, “Voon is quick to caution against using her studies to leap to conclusions about the addictiveness of sex or porn. “Much more research is required,” she explains.”
GARY WILSON: Voon’s 2014 comments have nothing to do with me; she’s just saying more studies need to be done. And many more studies have been published since July 2014. Here are 53 additional neuroscience-based studies, 29 reviews/commentaries: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/brain-scan-studies-porn-users.
Burgess should keep up to speed, as Voon has published 4 more neurological studies and 3 reviews/commentaries. All support the addiction model. Voon’s neuroscience studies:
Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder seems to fit well with non-substance addictive disorders proposed for ICD-11, consistent with the narrower term of sex addiction currently proposed for compulsive sexual behaviour disorder on the ICD-11 draft website. We believe that classification of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder as an addictive disorder is consistent with recent data.
Daniel Burgess “Nicole Prause (and trained researcher and scientist) at the University of California, Los Angeles, used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the brain waves of people presented with sexual images and found something different. She observed that volunteers who believed they had a problem with porn reacted to the pictures with low levels of excitement in the brain, unlike other addicts faced with triggering cues. “These people may be having problems, but of some other type,” says Prause. “Addiction is not a good way of understanding it.” https://www.1843magazine.com/…/can-you-really-be...
GARY WILSON: Burgess is citing an article, which cites Prause et al., 2015. Prause claimed she “debunked porn addiction” with a solitary flawed paper. The results: Compared to controls “individuals experiencing problems regulating their porn viewing” had lower brain responses to one-second exposure to photos of vanilla porn. Prause claims these results “debunk porn addiction.”
What legitimate scientist would claim that their lone study has debunked a well established field of study? In reality, the findings of Prause et al. 2015 align perfectly with Kühn & Gallinat (2014), which found that more porn use correlated with less brain activation in response to pictures of vanilla porn. Prause et al. findings also align with Banca et al. 2015. Lower EEG readings mean that subjects are paying less attention to the pictures. Put simply, frequent porn users were desensitized to static images of vanilla porn. They were bored (habituated or desensitized), which is consistent with addiction. See this extensive YBOP critique. Nine peer-reviewed papers agree that this study actually found desensitization/habituation in frequent porn users: YBOP critique of “Modulation of Late Positive Potentials by Sexual Images in Problem Users and Controls Inconsistent with ‘Porn Addiction’ (Prause et al., 2015)”
Excerpts from Mateusz Gola’s critique of Prause et al., 2015 (Decreased LPP for sexual images in problematic pornography users may be consistent with addiction models. Everything depends on the model: Commentary on Prause, 2015).
The conclusion presented in the study’s title “Modulation of late positive potentials by sexual images in problem users and controls inconsistent with “porn addiction” is ungrounded with respect to IST [the accepted model of addiction]…
Unfortunately, the bold title of Prause et al. (2015) has already had an impact on mass media, thus popularizing a scientifically unjustified conclusion. Due to the social and political importance of the topic of the effects of pornography consumption, researchers should draw future conclusions with greater caution…
As Gola and others mentioned in their peer-reviewed critiques, Prause et al., 2015 suffered from fatal flaws (as did Steele at al., 2013), such as:
1) As with Prause’s 2013 EEG study (Steele et al.), the subjects in this study were males, females and possibly “non-heterosexuals”. All evidence suggests Prause used the same subjects for her current study and her 2013 study: the number of females are identical (13) and the total numbers very close (52 vs. 55). If so, this current study also included 7 “non-heterosexuals”. This matters, because it violates standard procedure for addiction studies, in which researchers select homogeneous subjects in terms of age, gender, orientation, even similar IQ’s (plus a homogeneous control group) in order to avoid distortions caused by such differences. This is especially critical for studies like this one, which measured arousal to sexual images, as research confirms that men and women have significantly different brain responses to sexual images or films (Studies: 1,2, 3, 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14). This flaw alone calls into question both of Prause’s EEG studies.
2) Prause’s subjects were not pre-screened. Valid addiction brain studies screen out individuals with pre-existing conditions (depression, OCD, other addictions, etc.). This is the only way responsible researchers can draw conclusions about addiction. See the Cambridge University studies for an example of proper screening and methodology.
3) The two questionnaires Prause relied upon in both EEG studies to assess “porn addiction” are not validated to screen for internet porn use / addiction.
4) No one knows which, if any, of Prause’s subjects were actually porn addicts. This is why there are often quotation marks around “porn addicts” in our descriptions of these 3 studies. The subjects were recruited from Pocatello, Idaho via online advertisements requesting people who were “experiencing problems regulating their viewing of sexual images.” Pocatello, Idaho is over 50% Mormon, so many of the subjects may feel that any amount of porn use is a serious problem. In a 2013 interview Nicole Prause admits that a number of her subjects experienced only minor problems (which means they were not porn addicts – and her study can prove nothing about porn addiction):
“This study only included people who reported problems, ranging from relatively minor to overwhelming problems, controlling their viewing of visual sexual stimuli.”
You can’t debunk porn addiction if you are not assessing actual addicts. Even Prause’s findings did not align with the IST model, 24 other studies on CSB subjects report cue-reactivity & cravings in porn users/sex addicts: 1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.
Daniel Burgess: What is Garys response to Nicole, a respected scientist? Essentially, “Prause is pro-porn”.
GARY WILSON: My response to Prause’s work are critiques where I cite peer-reviewed papers critiquing Prause, and PhD’s critiquing her claims. In all the following links I link to the both the original papers, and the excerpts analyzing Prause’s papers and claims. I challenge Burgess to avoid cheap ad hominem attacks and address the specific content of my critiques and the associated peer-reviewed critiques to which I link.
Daniel Burgess: But always revert to pseudoscience, ad hominem and yet have NOTHING to show for it, what is Gary’s success rate of eliminating porn use?
GARY WILSON: He has given zero examples of either pseudoscience or ad hominem by me. This is a typical tactic – accuse those of what you are actually doing. Propaganda at its finest.
Gary’s “success rate of eliminating porn use“?
What the hell is Burgess talking about?
Daniel Burgess: Anyway, one can spend years going through the thousands of posts from Gary and pointing out every flaw.
GARY WILSON: Please do. As others can see, Burgess mischaracterized the Valerie Voon study, while I described it accurately. Burgess also lied about what I said on YBOP (that meth and cocaine are “the same as porn”). Notice that Burgess never links to YBOP and never provides an excerpt from YBOP.
GARY WILSON: The citation is not a study, its a narrative review of “the latest developments in the experimental brain study of human sexuality“. Nothing in the paper asserts that porn or sex addiction do not exist. An excerpt from the paper pertaining to CSB, which counters Burgess’s calims surrounding the paper:
Neuroscientific interest in the sexual wanting domain is increasingly narrowing down on sexual desire extremes. Several studies using visual sexual stimulation have shown that (perceived) hypersexual behavior (aka compulsive sexual behavior, sexual addiction, or problematic pornography use) is correlated with alterations in neural activation patterns [25–32] and regional brain volume [33•, 34], particularly in areas of the sexual wanting network [14•]. Increased activity to sexual cues has been demonstrated in the VS [25, 27] and also in the amygdala in hypersexual men [25, 27, 28], which is suggestive of sexual cue sensitization. This is sometimes taken to support the addiction theory of hypersexuality [35]. Other studies, however, showed negative correlations between sexual cue-induced brain activity and hypersexual symptom severity, suggesting the involvement of different phenomena that are seemingly incompatible with addiction, like response extinction or emotional downregulation [26, 28–30, 34]. These data may not be mutually exclusive. For instance, men with hypersexuality may be both sensitized to sexual cues or contingencies (a feature of addiction) and more easily lose interest or self-regulate if there is no possibility to advance the sexual response (as a learned adaptation). Indeed, in a paradigm with repeated exposure of cues predicting the presentation of a pornographic picture or a monetary reward, cue-induced activity in the ACC decreased faster with repeated exposure in men with hypersexuality—but only for the sexual cues [26].
(Note this paper did not review all the neurological studies on CSB subjects.)
On the other hand, we do have 29 actual reviews and commentaries, all of which lend support to the addiction model. The list of with links to original papers, and excerpts: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/brain-scan-studies-porn-users. Reproduced below:
Many recognize that several behaviors potentially affecting the reward circuitry in human brains lead to a loss of control and other symptoms of addiction in at least some individuals. Regarding Internet addiction, neuroscientific research supports the assumption that underlying neural processes are similar to substance addiction… Within this review, we give a summary of the concepts proposed underlying addiction and give an overview about neuroscientific studies on Internet addiction and Internet gaming disorder. Moreover, we reviewed available neuroscientific literature on Internet pornography addiction and connect the results to the addiction model. The review leads to the conclusion that Internet pornography addiction fits into the addiction framework and shares similar basic mechanisms with substance addiction.
As seen throughout this article, the common criticisms of sex as a legitimate addiction do not hold up when compared to the movement within the clinical and scientific communities over the past few decades. There is ample scientific evidence and support for sex as well as other behaviors to be accepted as addiction. This support is coming from multiple fields of practice and offers incredible hope to truly embrace change as we better understand the problem. Decades of research and developments in the field of addiction medicine and neuroscience reveal the underlying brain mechanisms involved in addiction. Scientists have identified common pathways affected by addictive behavior as well as differences between the brains of addicted and non-addicted individuals, revealing common elements of addiction, regardless of the substance or behavior. However, there remains a gap between the scientific advances and the understanding by the general public, public policy, and treatment advances.
Many individuals use cybersex applications, particularly Internet pornography. Some individuals experience a loss of control over their cybersex use and report that they cannot regulate their cybersex use even if they experienced negative consequences. In recent articles, cybersex addiction is considered a specific type of Internet addiction. Some current studies investigated parallels between cybersex addiction and other behavioral addictions, such as Internet Gaming Disorder. Cue-reactivity and craving are considered to play a major role in cybersex addiction. Also, neurocognitive mechanisms of development and maintenance of cybersex addiction primarily involve impairments in decision making and executive functions. Neuroimaging studies support the assumption of meaningful commonalities between cybersex addiction and other behavioral addictions as well as substance dependency.
Although not included in DSM-5, compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) can be diagnosed in ICD-10 as an impulse control disorder. However, debate exists about CSB’s classification. Additional research is needed to understand how neurobiological features relate to clinically relevant measures like treatment outcomes for CSB. Classifying CSB as a ‘behavioral addiction’ would have significant implications for policy, prevention and treatment efforts….. Given some similarities between CSB and drug addictions, interventions effective for addictions may hold promise for CSB, thus providing insight into future research directions to investigate this possibility directly.
With the release of DSM-5, gambling disorder was reclassified with substance use disorders. This change challenged beliefs that addiction occurred only by ingesting of mind-altering substances and has significant implications for policy, prevention and treatment strategies. Data suggest that excessive engagement in other behaviors (e.g. gaming, sex, compulsive shopping) may share clinical, genetic, neurobiological and phenomenological parallels with substance addictions.
Another area needing more research involves considering how technological changes may be influencing human sexual behaviors. Given that data suggest that sexual behaviors are facilitated through Internet and smartphone applications, additional research should consider how digital technologies relate to CSB (e.g. compulsive masturbation to Internet pornography or sex chatrooms) and engagement in risky sexual behaviors (e.g. condomless sex, multiple sexual partners on one occasion).
Overlapping features exist between CSB and substance use disorders. Common neurotransmitter systems may contribute to CSB and substance use disorders, and recent neuroimaging studies highlight similarities relating to craving and attentional biases. Similar pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments may be applicable to CSB and substance addictions.
Behavioral addictions and in particular hypersexuality should remind us of the fact that addictive behavior actually relies on our natural survival system. Sex is an essential component in survival of species since it is the pathway for reproduction. Therefore it is extremely important that sex is considered pleasurable and has primal rewarding properties, and although it may turn into an addiction at which point sex may be pursued in a dangerous and counterproductive way, the neural basis for addiction might actually serve very important purposes in primal goal pursuit of individuals…. Taken together, the evidence seems to imply that alterations in the frontal lobe, amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, septum, and brain regions that process reward play a prominent role in the emergence of hypersexuality. Genetic studies and neuropharmacological treatment approaches point at an involvement of the dopaminergic system.
I have carried out empirical research into many different behavioural addictions (gambling, video-gaming, internet use, exercise, sex, work, etc.) and have argued that some types of problematic sexual behaviour can be classed as sex addiction, depending upon the definition of addiction used….
Whether problematic sexual behaviour is described as compulsive sexual behavior (CSB), sex addiction and/or hypersexual disorder, there are thousands of psychological therapists around the world who treat such disorders. Consequently, clinical evidence from those who help and treat such individuals should be given greater credence by the psychiatric community….
Arguably the most important development in the field of CSB and sex addiction is how the internet is changing and facilitating CSB. This was not mentioned until the concluding paragraph, yet research into online sex addiction (while comprising a small empirical base) has existed since the late 1990s, including sample sizes of up to almost 10 000 individuals. In fact, there have been recent reviews of empirical data concerning online sex addiction and treatment. These have outlined the many specific features of the internet that may facilitate and stimulate addictive tendencies in relation to sexual behaviour (accessibility, affordability, anonymity, convenience, escape, disinhibition, etc.).
We recently considered evidence for classifying compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) as a non-substance (behavioral) addiction. Our review found that CSB shared clinical, neurobiological and phenomenological parallels with substance-use disorders….
Although the American Psychiatric Association rejected hypersexual disorder from DSM-5, a diagnosis of CSB (excessive sex drive) can be made using ICD-10. CSB is also being considered by ICD-11, although its ultimate inclusion is not certain. Future research should continue to build knowledge and strengthen a framework for better understanding CSB and translating this information into improved policy, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment efforts to minimize the negative impacts of CSB.
9) Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review With Clinical Reports (Park et al., 2016). An extensive review of the literature related to porn-induced sexual problems. Involving 7 US Navy doctors and Gary Wilson, the review provides the latest data revealing a tremendous rise in youthful sexual problems. It also reviews the neurological studies related to porn addiction and sexual conditioning via Internet porn. The doctors provide 3 clinical reports of men who developed porn-induced sexual dysfunctions. A second 2016 paper by Gary Wilson discusses the importance of studying the effects of porn by having subjects abstain from porn use: Eliminate Chronic Internet Pornography Use to Reveal Its Effects (2016). Excerpts:
Traditional factors that once explained men’s sexual difficulties appear insufficient to account for the sharp rise in erectile dysfunction, delayed ejaculation, decreased sexual satisfaction, and diminished libido during partnered sex in men under 40. This review (1) considers data from multiple domains, e.g., clinical, biological (addiction/urology), psychological (sexual conditioning), sociological; and (2) presents a series of clinical reports, all with the aim of proposing a possible direction for future research of this phenomenon. Alterations to the brain’s motivational system are explored as a possible etiology underlying pornography-related sexual dysfunctions. This review also considers evidence that Internet pornography’s unique properties (limitless novelty, potential for easy escalation to more extreme material, video format, etc.) may be potent enough to condition sexual arousal to aspects of Internet pornography use that do not readily transition to real-life partners, such that sex with desired partners may not register as meeting expectations and arousal declines. Clinical reports suggest that terminating Internet pornography use is sometimes sufficient to reverse negative effects, underscoring the need for extensive investigation using methodologies that have subjects remove the variable of Internet pornography use.
3.4. Neuroadaptations Related to Internet Pornography-Induced Sexual Difficulties: We hypothesize that pornography-induced sexual difficulties involve both hyperactivity and hypoactivity in the brain’s motivational system [72, 129] and neural correlates of each, or both, have been identified in recent studies on Internet pornography users [31, 48, 52, 53, 54, 86, 113, 114, 115, 120, 121, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134].
Although the DSM-5 focuses on Internet gaming, a meaningful number of authors indicate that treatment-seeking individuals may also use other Internet applications or sites addictively….
From the current state of research, we suggest to include Internet-use disorders in the upcoming ICD-11. It is important to note that beyond Internet-gaming disorder, other types of applications are also used problematically. One approach could involve the introduction of a general term of Internet-use disorder, which could then be specified considering the first-choice application that is used (for example Internet-gaming disorder, Internet-gambling disorder, Internet-pornography-use disorder, Internet-communication disorder, and Internet-shopping disorder).
We review the neurobiological basis for addiction, including natural or process addiction, and then discuss how this relates to our current understanding of sexuality as a natural reward that can become functionally “unmanageable” in an individual’s life….
It is clear that the current definition and understanding of addiction has changed based with the infusion of knowledge regarding how the brain learns and desires. Whereas sexual addiction was formerly defined based solely on behavioral criteria, it is now seen also through the lens of neuromodulation. Those who will not or cannot understand these concepts may continue to cling to a more neurologically naïve perspective, but those who are able to comprehend the behavior in the context of the biology, this new paradigm provides an integrative and functional definition of sexual addiction which informs both the scientist and the clinician.
The availability of pornographic material has substantially increased with the development of the Internet. As a result of this, men ask for treatment more often because their pornography consumption intensity is out of control; i.e., they are not able to stop or reduce their problematic behavior although they are faced with negative consequences…. In the last two decades, several studies with neuroscientific approaches, especially functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), were conducted to explore the neural correlates of watching pornography under experimental conditions and the neural correlates of excessive pornography use. Given previous results, excessive pornography consumption can be connected to already known neurobiological mechanisms underlying the development of substance-related addictions.
Finally, we summarized the studies, which investigated the correlates of excessive pornography consumption on a neural level. Despite a lack of longitudinal studies, it is plausible that the observed characteristics in men with sexual addiction are the results not the causes of excessive pornography consumption. Most of the studies report stronger cue reactivity in the reward circuit toward sexual material in excessive pornography users than in control subjects, which mirrors the findings of substance-related addictions. The results concerning a reduced prefrontal-striatal-connectivity in subjects with pornography addiction can be interpreted as a sign of an impaired cognitive control over the addictive behavior.
Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (operationalised as hypersexual disorder) was considered for inclusion in DSM-5 but ultimately excluded, despite the generation of formal criteria and field trial testing. This exclusion has hindered prevention, research, and treatment efforts, and left clinicians without a formal diagnosis for compulsive sexual behaviour disorder.
Research into the neurobiology of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder has generated findings relating to attentional biases, incentive salience attributions, and brain-based cue reactivity that suggest substantial similarities with addictions. Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder is being proposed as an impulse-control disorder in ICD-11, consistent with a proposed view that craving, continued engagement despite adverse consequences, compulsive engagement, and diminished control represent core features of impulse-control disorders. This view might have been appropriate for some DSM-IV impulse-control disorders, specifically pathological gambling. However, these elements have long been considered central to addictions, and in the transition from DSM-IV to DSM-5, the category of Impulse Control Disorders Not Elsewhere Classified was restructured, with pathological gambling renamed and reclassified as an addictive disorder. At present, the ICD-11 beta draft site lists the impulse-control disorders, and includes compulsive sexual behaviour disorder, pyromania, kleptomania, and intermittent explosive disorder.
Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder seems to fit well with non-substance addictive disorders proposed for ICD-11, consistent with the narrower term of sex addiction currently proposed for compulsive sexual behaviour disorder on the ICD-11 draft website. We believe that classification of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder as an addictive disorder is consistent with recent data and might benefit clinicians, researchers, and individuals suffering from and personally affected by this disorder.
The review first looks at the basic neurobiology of addiction with the basic reward circuit and structures involved generally in any addiction. The focus then shifts to pornography addiction and studies done on the neurobiology of the condition are reviewed. The role of dopamine in pornography addiction is reviewed along with the role of certain brain structures as seen on MRI studies. fMRI studies involving visual sexual stimuli have been used widely to study the neuroscience behind pornography usage and the findings from these studies are highlighted. The effect of pornography addiction on higher order cognitive functions and executive function is also stressed.
In total, 59 articles were identified which included reviews, mini reviews and original research papers on the issues of pornography usage, addiction and neurobiology. The research papers reviewed here were centered on those that elucidated a neurobiological basis for pornography addiction. We included studies that had decent sample size and sound methodology with appropriate statistical analysis. There were some studies with fewer participants, case series, case reports and qualitative studies that were also analyzed for this paper. Both the authors reviewed all the papers and the most relevant ones were chosen for this review. This was further supplemented with the personal clinical experience of both the authors who work regularly with patients where pornography addiction and viewing is a distressing symptom. The authors also have psychotherapeutic experience with these patients that have added value to the neurobiological understanding.
As described elsewhere (Kraus, Voon, & Potenza, 2016a), there is an increasing number of publications on CSB, reaching over 11,400 in 2015. Nonetheless, fundamental questions on the conceptualization of CSB remain unanswered (Potenza, Gola, Voon, Kor, & Kraus, 2017). It would be relevant to consider how the DSM and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) operate with respect to definition and classification processes. In doing so, we think it is relevant to focus on gambling disorder (also known as pathological gambling) and how it was considered in DSM-IV and DSM-5 (as well as in ICD-10 and the forthcoming ICD-11). In DSM-IV, pathological gambling was categorized as an “Impulse-Control Disorder Not Elsewhere Classified.” In DSM-5, it was reclassified as a “Substance-Related and Addictive Disorder.”…. A similar approach should be applied to CSB, which is currently being considered for inclusion as an impulse-control disorder in ICD-11 (Grant et al., 2014; Kraus et al., 2018)….
Among the domains that may suggest similarities between CSB and addictive disorders are neuroimaging studies, with several recent studies omitted by Walton et al. (2017). Initial studies often examined CSB with respect to models of addiction (reviewed in Gola, Wordecha, Marchewka, & Sescousse, 2016b; Kraus, Voon, & Potenza, 2016b). A prominent model—the incentive salience theory (Robinson & Berridge, 1993)—states that in individuals with addictions, cues associated with substances of abuse may acquire strong incentive values and evoke craving. Such reactions may relate to activations of brain regions implicated in reward processing, including the ventral striatum. Tasks assessing cue reactivity and reward processing may be modified to investigate the specificity of cues (e.g., monetary versus erotic) to specific groups (Sescousse, Barbalat, Domenech, & Dreher, 2013), and we have recently applied this task to study a clinical sample (Gola et al., 2017). We found that individuals seeking treatment for problematic pornography use and masturbation, when compared to matched (by age, gender, income, religiosity, amount of sexual contacts with partners, sexual arousability) healthy control subjects, showed increased ventral striatal reactivity for cues of erotic rewards, but not for associated rewards and not for monetary cues and rewards. This pattern of brain reactivity is in line with the incentive salience theory and suggests that a key feature of CSB may involve cue reactivity or craving induced by initially neutral cues associated with sexual activity and sexual stimuli. Additional data suggest that other brain circuits and mechanisms may be involved in CSB, and these may include anterior cingulate, hippocampus and amygdala (Banca et al., 2016; Klucken, Wehrum-Osinsky, Schweckendiek, Kruse, & Stark, 2016; Voon et al., 2014). Among these, we have hypothesized that the extended amygdala circuit that relates to high reactivity for threats and anxiety may be particularly clinically relevant (Gola, Miyakoshi, & Sescousse, 2015; Gola & Potenza, 2016) based on observation that some CSB individuals present with high levels of anxiety (Gola et al., 2017) and CSB symptoms may be reduced together with pharmacological reduction in anxiety (Gola & Potenza, 2016)…
For many individuals who experience persistent patterns of difficulty or failures in controlling intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges that result in sexual behavior associated with marked distress or impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning, it is very important to be able to name and identify their problem. It is also important that care providers (i.e., clinicians and counselors) from whom individuals may seek help are familiar with CSBs. During our studies involving over 3,000 subjects seeking treatment for CSB, we have frequently heard that individuals suffering from CSB encounter multiple barriers during their seeking of help or in contact with clinicians (Dhuffar & Griffiths, 2016). Patients report that clinicians may avoid the topic, state that such problems do not exist, or suggest that one has a high sexual drive, and should accept it instead of treating (despite that for these individuals, the CSBs may feel ego-dystonic and lead to multiple negative consequences). We believe that well-defined criteria for CSB disorder will promote educational efforts including development of training programs on how to assess and treat individuals with symptoms of CSB disorder. We hope that such programs will become a part of clinical training for psychologists, psychiatrists, and other providers of mental health care services, as well as other care providers including primary care providers, such as generalist physicians.
Basic questions on how best to conceptualize CSB disorder and provide effective treatments should be addressed. The current proposal of classifying CSB disorder as an impulse-control disorder is controversial as alternate models have been proposed (Kor, Fogel, Reid, & Potenza, 2013). There are data suggesting that CSB shares many features with addictions (Kraus et al., 2016), including recent data indicating increased reactivity of reward-related brain regions in response to cues associated with erotic stimuli (Brand, Snagowski, Laier, & Maderwald, 2016; Gola, Wordecha, Marchewka, & Sescousse, 2016; Gola et al., 2017; Klucken, Wehrum-Osinsky, Schweckendiek, Kruse, & Stark, 2016; Voon et al., 2014). Furthermore, preliminary data suggest that naltrexone, a medication with indications for alcohol- and opioid-use disorders, may be helpful for treating CSBs (Kraus, Meshberg-Cohen, Martino, Quinones, & Potenza, 2015; Raymond, Grant, & Coleman, 2010). With respect to CSB disorder’s proposed classification as an impulse-control disorder, there are data suggesting that individuals seeking treatment for one form of CSB disorder, problematic pornography use, do not differ in terms of impulsivity from the general population. They are instead presented with increased anxiety (Gola, Miyakoshi, & Sescousse, 2015; Gola et al., 2017), and pharmacological treatment targeting anxiety symptoms may be helpful in reducing some CSB symptoms (Gola & Potenza, 2016). While it may not yet be possible to draw definitive conclusions regarding classification, more data seem to support classification as an addictive disorder when compared to an impulse-control disorder (Kraus et al., 2016), and more research is needed to examine relationships with other psychiatric conditions (Potenza et al., 2017).
Compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) is widely regarded as a “behavioral addiction,” and is a major threat to quality of life and both physical and mental health. However, CSB has been slow to be recognized clinically as a diagnosable disorder. CSB is co-morbid with affective disorders as well as substance use disorders, and recent neuroimaging studies have demonstrated shared or overlapping neural pathologies disorders, especially in brain regions controlling motivational salience and inhibitory control. Clinical neuroimaging studies are reviewed that have identified structural and/or function changes in prefrontal cortex, amygdala, striatum, and thalamus in individuals suffering from CSB. A preclinical model to study the neural underpinnings of CSB in male rats is discussed consisting of a conditioned aversion procedure to examine seeking of sexual behavior despite known negative consequences.
Because CSB shares characteristics with other compulsive disorders, namely, drug addiction, comparisons of findings in CSB, and drug-addicted subjects, may be valuable to identify common neural pathologies mediating comorbidity of these disorders. Indeed, many studies have shown similar patterns of neural activity and connectivity within limbic structures that are involved in both CSB and chronic drug use [87–89].
In conclusion, this review summarized the behavioral and neuroimaging studies on human CSB and comorbidity with other disorders, including substance abuse. Together, these studies indicate that CSB is associated with functional alterations in dorsal anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex, amygdala, striatum, and thalamus, in addition to decreased connectivity between amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Moreover, a preclinical model for CSB in male rats was described, including new evidence of neural alterations in mPFC and OFC that are correlated with loss of inhibitory control of sexual behavior. This preclinical model offers a unique opportunity to test key hypotheses to identify predispositions and underlying causes of CSB and comorbidity with other disorders.
Low sexual desire, reduced satisfaction in sexual intercourse, and erectile dysfunction (ED) are increasingly common in young population. In an Italian study from 2013, up to 25% of subjects suffering from ED were under the age of 40 [1], and in a similar study published in 2014, more than half of Canadian sexually experienced men between the age of 16 and 21 suffered from some kind of sexual disorder [2]. At the same time, prevalence of unhealthy lifestyles associated with organic ED has not changed significantly or has decreased in the last decades, suggesting that psychogenic ED is on the rise [3]. The DSM-IV-TR defines some behaviors with hedonic qualities, such as gambling, shopping, sexual behaviors, Internet use, and video game use, as “impulse control disorders not elsewhere classified”—although these are often described as behavioral addictions [4]. Recent investigation has suggested the role of behavioral addiction in sexual dysfunctions: alterations in neurobiological pathways involved in sexual response might be a consequence of repeated, supernormal stimuli of various origins.
Among behavioral addictions, problematic Internet use and online pornography consumption are often cited as possible risk factors for sexual dysfunction, often with no definite boundary between the two phenomena. Online users are attracted to Internet pornography because of its anonymity, affordability, and accessibility, and in many cases its usage could lead users through a cybersex addiction: in these cases, users are more likely to forget the “evolutionary” role of sex, finding more excitement in self-selected sexually explicit material than in intercourse.
In literature, researchers are discordant about positive and negative function of online pornography. From the negative perspective, it represents the principal cause of compulsive masturbatory behavior, cybersex addiction, and even erectile dysfunction.
To date, most neuroimaging research on compulsive sexual behavior has provided evidence of overlapping mechanisms underlying compulsive sexual behavior and non-sexual addictions. Compulsive sexual behavior is associated with altered functioning in brain regions and networks implicated in sensitization, habituation, impulse dyscontrol, and reward processing in patterns like substance, gambling, and gaming addictions. Key brain regions linked to CSB features include the frontal and temporal cortices, amygdala, and striatum, including the nucleus accumbens.
CSBD has been included in the current version of theICD-11 as an impulse-control disorder [39]. As described by the WHO, ‘Impulse-control disorders are characterized by the repeated failure to resist an impulse, drive, or urge to perform an act that is rewarding to the person, at least in the short-term, despite consequences such as longer-term harm either to the individual or to others, marked distress about the behaviour pattern, or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning’ [39]. Current findings raise important questions regarding the classification of CSBD. Many disorders characterized by impaired impulse-control are classified elsewhere in the ICD-11 (for example, gambling, gaming, and substance-use disorders are classified as being addictive disorders) [123].
Recent neurobiological studies have revealed that compulsive sexual behaviors are associated with altered processing of sexual material and differences in brain structure and function.
The findings summarized in our overview suggest relevant similarities with behavioral and substance-related addictions, which share many abnormalities found for CSBD (as reviewed in [127]). Although beyond the scope of the present report, substance and behavioral addictions are characterized by altered cue reactivity indexed by subjective, behavioral, and neurobiological measures (overviews and reviews: [128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133]; alcohol: [134, 135]; cocaine: [136, 137]; tobacco: [138, 139]; gambling: [140, 141]; gaming: [142, 143]). Results concerning resting-state functional connectivity show similarities between CSBD and other addictions [144, 145].
Although few neurobiological studies of CSBD have been conducted to date, existing data suggest neurobiological abnormalities share communalities with other additions such as substance use and gambling disorders. Thus, existing data suggest that its classification may be better suited as a behavioral addiction rather than an impulse-control disorder.
Compulsive Sexual Behaviors (CSB) are a reason to seek treatment. Given this reality, the number of studies on CSB has increased substantially in the last decade and the World Health Organization (WHO) included CSB in its proposal for the upcoming ICD-11…… From our point of view, it is worth investigating whether CSB can be distinguished into two subtypes characterized by: (1) dominant interpersonal sexual behaviors, and (2) dominant solitary sexual behaviors and pornography watching (48, 49).
The amount of available studies on CSB (and sub-clinical populations of frequent pornography users) is constantly increasing. Among currently available studies, we were able to find nine publications (Table 1) which utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging. Only four of these (36–39) directly investigated processing of erotic cues and/or rewards and reported findings related to ventral striatum activations. Three studies indicate increased ventral striatal reactivity for erotic stimuli (36–39) or cues predicting such stimuli (36–39). These findings are consistent with Incentive Salience Theory (IST) (28), one of the most prominent frameworks describing brain functioning in addiction. The only support for another theoretical framework which predicts hypoactivation of the ventral striatum in addiction, RDS theory (29, 30), comes partially from one study (37), where individuals with CSB presented lower ventral striatal activation for exciting stimuli when compared to controls.
In the last few years, there has been a wave of articles related to behavioral addictions; some of them have a focus on online pornography addiction. However, despite all efforts, we are still unable to profile when engaging in this behavior becomes pathological. Common problems include: sample bias, the search for diagnostic instrumentals, opposing approximations to the matter, and the fact that this entity may be encompassed inside a greater pathology (i.e., sex addiction) that may present itself with very diverse symptomatology. Behavioral addictions form a largely unexplored field of study, and usually exhibit a problematic consumption model: loss of control, impairment, and risky use. Hypersexual disorder fits this model and may be composed of several sexual behaviors, like problematic use of online pornography (POPU). Online pornography use is on the rise, with a potential for addiction considering the “triple A” influence (accessibility, affordability, anonymity). This problematic use might have adverse effects in sexual development and sexual functioning, especially among the young population.
As far as we know, a number of recent studies support this entity as an addiction with important clinical manifestations such as sexual dysfunction and psychosexual dissatisfaction. Most of the existing work is based off on similar research done on substance addicts, based on the hypothesis of online pornography as a ‘supranormal stimulus’ akin to an actual substance that, through continued consumption, can spark an addictive disorder. However, concepts like tolerance and abstinence are not yet clearly established enough to merit the labeling of addiction, and thus constitute a crucial part of future research. For the moment, a diagnostic entity encompassing out of control sexual behavior has been included in the ICD-11 due to its current clinical relevance, and it will surely be of use to address patients with these symptoms that ask clinicians for help.
Initiation and development of cybersex addiction have two stages with classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Firstly, individuals use cybersex occasionally out of entertainment and curiosity. On this stage, use of internet devices is paired with sexual arousal and The results in classical conditioning, further leads to sensitization of cybersex-related cues which trigger intense craving. Individual vulnerabilities also facilitate sensitization of cybersex-related cues. On the second stage, individuals make use of cybersex frequently to satisfy their sexual desires or During this process, cybersex-related cognitive bias like positive expectation of cybersex and coping mechanism like using it to deal with negative emotions are positively reinforced, those personal traits associated with cybersex addiction such as narcissism, sexual sensation seeking, sexual excitability, dysfunction use of sex are also positively reinforced, while common personality disorders like nervousness, low self-esteem and psychopathologies like depression, anxiety are negatively reinforced. Executive function deficits occur due to long-term cybersex use. Interaction of executive function deficits and intense craving promotes development and maintenance Of cybersex addiction. Researches using electrophysiological and brain imaging tools mainly to study cybersex addiction found that cybersex addicts may develop more and more robust craving for cybersex when facing cybersex-related cues, but they feel less and less pleasant when using it. Studies provide evidence for intense craving triggered by cybersex-related cues and impaired executive function. In conclusion, people who are vulnerable to cybersex addiction can’t stop cybersex use out of more and more intense craving for cybersex and impaired executive function, but they feel less and less satisfied when using it, and search for more and more original pornographic materials online at the cost of plenty of time and money. Once they reduce cybersex use or just quit it, they would suffer from a series of adverse effects like depression, anxiety, erection dysfunction, lack of sexual arousal.
Compulsive sexual behavior disorder, including problematic pornography use, has been included in the ICD-11 as impulse control disorder. The diagnostic criteria for this disorder, however, are very similar to the criteria for disorders due to addictive behaviors, for example repetitive sexual activities becoming a central focus of the personʼs life, unsuccessful efforts to significantly reduce repetitive sexual behaviors and continued repetitive sexual behaviors despite experiencing negative consequences (WHO, 2019). Many researchers and clinicians also argue that problematic pornography use can be considered a behavioral addiction.
Cue-reactivity and craving in combination with reduced inhibitory control, implicit cognitions (e.g. approach tendencies) and experiencing gratification and compensation linked to pornography use have been demonstrated in individuals with symptoms of pornography-use disorder. Neuroscientific studies confirm the involvement of addiction-related brain circuits, including the ventral striatum and other parts of fronto-striatal loops, in the development and maintenance of problematic pornography use. Case reports and proof-of-concept studies suggest the efficacy of pharmacological interventions, for example the opioid antagonist naltrexone, for treating individuals with pornography-use disorder and compulsive sexual behavior disorder.
Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence suggest that the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms involved in addictive disorders are also valid for pornography-use disorder.
Self-perceived problematic pornography use seems to be related to multiple units of analysis and different systems in the organism. Based on the findings within the RDoC paradigm described above, it is possible to create a cohesive model in which different units of analysis impact each other (Fig. 1). It appears that elevated levels of dopamine, present in the natural activation of the reward system related to sexual activity and orgasm, interfere with the regulation of the VTA-NAc system in people who report SPPPU. This dysregulation leads to greater activation of the reward system and increased conditioning related to the use of pornography, fostering approach behavior to pornographic material due to the increase in dopamine in the nucleus accumbens.
Continued exposure to immediate and easily available pornographic material seems to create an imbalance in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system. This excess dopamine activates GABA output pathways, producing dynorphin as a byproduct, which inhibits dopamine neurons. When dopamine decreases, acetylcholine is released and can generate an aversive state (Hoebel et al. 2007), creating the negative reward system found in the second stage of addiction models. This imbalance is also correlated to the shift from approach to avoidance behavior, seen in people who report problematic pornography use…. These changes in internal and behavioral mechanisms among people with SPPPU are similar to those observed in people with substance addictions, and map into models of addiction (Love et al. 2015).
Cybersex addiction is a non-substance related addiction that involves online sexual activity on the internet. Nowadays, various kinds of things related to sex or pornography are easily accessible through internet media. In Indonesia, sexuality is usually assumed taboo but most young people have been exposed to pornography. It can lead to an addiction with many negative effects on users, such as relationships, money, and psychiatric problems like major depression and anxiety disorders.
Compulsive sexual behavior disorder, as has been included in the ICD-11 category of impulse-control disorders, may include a broad range of sexual behaviors including excessive viewing of pornography that constitutes a clinically relevant phenomenon (Brand, Blycker, & Potenza, 2019; Kraus et al., 2018). The classification of compulsive sexual behavior disorder has been debated (Derbyshire & Grant, 2015), with some authors suggesting that the addiction framework is more appropriate (Gola & Potenza, 2018), which can be particularly the case for individuals suffering specifically from problems related to pornography use and not from other compulsive or impulsive sexual behaviors (Gola, Lewczuk, & Skorko, 2016; Kraus, Martino, & Potenza, 2016).
Based on evidence reviewed with respect to the three meta-level-criteria proposed, we suggest that pornography-use disorder is a condition that may be diagnosed with the ICD-11 category “other specified disorders due to addictive behaviors” based on the three core criteria for gaming disorder, modified with respect to pornography viewing (Brand, Blycker, et al., 2019). One conditio sine qua non for considering pornography-use disorder within this category would be that the individual suffers solely and specifically from diminished control over pornography consumption (nowadays online pornography in most cases), which is not accompanied by further compulsive sexual behaviors (Kraus et al., 2018). Further, the behavior should be considered as an addictive behavior only if it is related to functional impairment and experiencing negative consequences in daily life, as it is also the case for gaming disorder (Billieux et al., 2017; World Health Organization, 2019). However, we also note that pornography-use disorder may currently be diagnosed with the current ICD-11 diagnosis of compulsive sexual behavior disorder given that pornography viewing and the frequently accompanying sexual behaviors (most frequently masturbation but potentially other sexual activities including partnered sex) may meet the criteria for compulsive sexual behavior disorder (Kraus & Sweeney, 2019). The diagnosis of compulsive sexual behavior disorder may fit for individuals who not only use pornography addictively, but who also suffer from other non-pornography-related compulsive sexual behaviors. The diagnosis of pornography-use disorder as other specified disorder due to addictive behaviors may be more adequate for individuals who exclusively suffer from poorly controlled pornography viewing (in most cases accompanied by masturbation). Whether or not a distinction between online and offline pornography use may be useful is currently debated, which is also the case for online/offline gaming (Király & Demetrovics, 2017).
Available findings suggest that there are several features of CSBD and POPU that are consistent with characteristics of addiction, and that interventions helpful in targeting behavioural and substance addictions warrant consideration for adaptation and use in supporting individuals with CSBD and POPU. While there are no randomized trials of treatments for CSBD or POPU, opioid antagonists, cognitive behavioural therapy, and mindfulness-based intervention appear to show promise on the basis of some case reports.
The neurobiology of POPU and CSBD involves a number of shared neuroanatomical correlates with established substance use disorders, similar neuropsychological mechanisms, as well as common neurophysiological alterations in the dopamine reward system.
Several studies have cited shared patterns of neuroplasticity between sexual addiction and established addictive disorders.
Mirroring excessive substance use, the use of excessive pornography has a negative impact on several domains of functioning, impairment and distress.
1. The use of pornography among young people, who use it massively online, is connected to the decrease in sexual desire and premature ejaculation, as well as in some cases to social anxiety disorders, depression, DOC, and ADHD [30-32].
2. There is a clear neurobiological difference between “sexual employees” and “porn addicts”: if the former has a ventral hypoactivity, the latter instead are characterized by greater ventral reactivity for erotic signals and rewards without hypoactivity of the reward circuits. This would suggest that employees need interpersonal physical contact, while the latter tend to solitary activity [33,34]. Also, drug addicts exhibit greater disorganization of the white matter of the prefrontal cortex [35].
3. Porn addiction, although distinct neurobiologically from sexual addiction, is still a form of behavioral addiction and this dysfunctionality favors an aggravation of the person’s psychopathological condition, directly and indirectly involving a neurobiological modification at the level of desensitization to functional sexual stimulus, hypersensitization to stimulus sexual dysfunction, a marked level of stress capable of affecting the hormonal values of the pituitary-hypothalamic-adrenal axis and hypofrontality of the prefrontal circuits [36].
4. The low tolerance of pornography consumption was confirmed by an fMRI study which found a lower presence of gray matter in the reward system (dorsal striatum) related to the quantity of pornography consumed. He also found that increased use of pornography is correlated with less activation of the reward circuit while briefly watching sexual photos. Researchers believe their results indicated desensitization and possibly tolerance, which is the need for more stimulation to achieve the same level of arousal. Furthermore, signals of lower potential have been found in Putamen in porn-dependent subjects [37].
5. Contrary to what one might think, porn addicts do not have a high sexual desire and the masturbatory practice associated with viewing pornographic material decreases the desire also favoring premature ejaculation, as the subject feels more comfortable in solo activity. Therefore individuals with greater reactivity to porn prefer to perform solitary sexual acts than shared with a real person [38,39].
6. The sudden suspension of porn addiction causes negative effects in mood, excitement, and relational and sexual satisfaction [40,41].
7. The massive use of pornography facilitates the onset of psychosocial disorders and relationship difficulties [42].
8. The neural networks involved in sexual behavior are similar to those involved in processing other rewards, including addictions.
This new study found that behavioral addicts (not just porn addicts) often disapprove of the behaviors they are struggling to eliminate. If that sounds like common sense, it is. But that didn’t stop a group of researchers from using evidence of porn addicts’ natural disapproval to create a powerful, flawed meme that porn problems are likely just due to religious shame or moral disapproval (and thus, by implication, that porn addiction isn’t real). Here’s the man behind the myth, Josh Grubbs, pushing his agenda:
What Grubbs and his colleagues forgot to investigate is whether other behavioral addicts also experience moral disapproval toward the activity they’re trying to eliminate. Their promotion of their MI model without first investigating that underlying assumption reveals either sloppiness or casts doubt on their scientific objectivity. Unfortunately, there’s substantial evidence of the latter.
Bowling Green State University’s Josh Grubbs (ably assisted by UCLA’s Rory Reid and multiple other colleagues) has been extremely vocal in the press and in the peer-reviewed literature – always discounting porn addiction and various porn-induced symptoms. And always implying that moral disapproval (and before that “perceived addiction”) explained more than any other factor related to compulsive porn use.
These researchers orchestrated this “moral disapproval” campaign despite repeated findings in their own papers that porn addiction actually correlated most strongly not with disapproval but with levels of porn use! The latter findings point to porn addiction being real. Yet these researchers repeatedly swept these inconvenient findings under the rug.
Happily, in this case, science has finally self-corrected (the way it’s supposed to). “Moral disapproval” is not unique to porn addicts. All behavioral addicts experience “moral disapproval.” Thus, it’s finally evident that Grubbs et al built their campaign on a house of cards. The upshot is that all of the MI findings to date are worthy of an uninterested yawn – not the noisy, deceptive headlines they have received.
In the meantime, much damage has been done. These researchers’ misleading meme has persuaded many of their sexology and psychology colleagues that porn addiction is a doubtful concept. Those duped have ignored or simply discounted the vast evidence suggesting that porn addiction is as real as gambling and gaming addiction (both now codified in widely used diagnostic manuals).
Sadly, the baseless “MI = porn addiction” meme will continue to lurch around for a while, even though its head has been cut off. Look carefully at those who do research purporting to support the MI concept. Check for bias. (I offer an example later in this article.)
Background
To grasp the full significance of this new study you need some background.
As stated above, the “moral incongruence” (MI) model of explaining away porn addiction was the brainchild of pro-porn researcher Josh Grubbs. But MI was actually his second-generation anti-porn addiction meme.
Essentially, the CPUI-9 questionnaire, while claiming to measure “perceived addiction,” did not stick to addiction-related questions, let alone have the power to distinguish “perceived” from “actual” addiction. However, many presumed it did, relying on its wholly inaccurate spin-term label “perceived addiction.” (The phrase “perceived pornography addiction” indicates nothing more than the total CPUI-9 score.)
The CPUI-9 cunningly included three extraneous questions about guilt and shame on which religious users would always score higher, thus guaranteeing skewed results that permitted a circular finding to Grubbs’s liking: being religious correlating with “perceived porn addiction.”
Here’s Grubbs’s dubious CPUI-9:
Perceived Compulsivity Section
I believe I am addicted to Internet pornography.
I feel unable to stop my use of online pornography.
Even when I do not want to view pornography online, I feel drawn to it
Access Efforts Section
At times, I try to arrange my schedule so that I will be able to be alone in order to view pornography.
I have refused to go out with friends or attend certain social functions to have the opportunity to view pornography.
I have put off important priorities to view pornography.
I feel depressed after viewing pornography online.
I feel sick after viewing pornography online.
As you can see, the CPUI-9 cannot distinguish between actual porn addiction and “belief” in porn addiction. Subjects never “labeled themselves as porn addicts” in any Grubbs CPUI-9 study. They simply answered the 9 questions above, and earned a total score.
Here’s the key to all the dubious claims and questionable correlations: the Emotional Distress questions (7-9) cause religious porn users to score higher, and secular porn users to score lower, as well as creating a strong correlation between “moral disapproval” and total CPUI-9 score (“perceived porn addiction”).
In short, correlations from Grubbs’s most famous study reveal that questions 7-9 skew everything towards his agenda of attempting to blame porn addiction on morals and religion:
To put it another way, if you use only results from CPUI-9 questions 1-6 (which assess the signs and symptoms of an actual addiction), the correlations dramatically change – and all the dubious articles claiming shame is the “real” cause porn addiction would never have been written. Such claims rest entirely on the manipulative Emotional Distress questions (7-9), which have no place in an assessment test for any addiction. Correlations from the same study reveal that levels of porn use are by far the best predictor of actual addiction (questions 1-6).
As long as no one looked under the hood, Grubbs’s meme that “porn addiction was just guilt and shame” was superficially supported. The media ran with it and Grubbs fanned the flames, as documented in this longer article.
Eventually researchers, including Grubbs himself (once he was under fire), began to test subjects more directly by asking porn users (1) whether they thought they were addicted, and (2) how religious they were. To Grubbs’s chagrin, there was no meaningful correlation. The “perceived addiction” myth was discredited, and even Grubbs abandoned it.
Undaunted by being called out for a flawed model with a misleading label (“perceived addiction”), in 2018, Grubbs et al launched the flawed “moral incongruence” or MI model. Taking up where “perceived addiction” left off, “moral incongruence” attempted to explain away porn addiction as a moral issue.
Grubbs et al and their followers swiftly pumped out studies and a review (!) correlating moral disapproval of subjects’ porn use with subjects’ porn addiction scores to support their shiny new meme. Grubbs tweets that porn problems are rarely actual addiction, just “beliefs” and “perceptions” (Grubbs is not a neuroscientist):
Alas, as stated earlier, he and his colleagues did so without first checking their underlying assumption (now shown to be incorrect) that porn use was somehow unique with respect to MI. They also largely buried their inconvenient findings that there was a much stronger correlation between levels of porn use and perception of oneself as an addict (which is what one would expect in addicts) than the correlation between MI and perception of oneself as an addict. Disturbing omissions, and two more strikes against Grubbs.
With the MI model now exposed as a red herring, and the CPUI-9 questionnaire revealed as irretrievably skewed, it’s time for study authors in this field to cease obscuring that the strongest correlations they obtain in their MI/CPUI-9 studies are between porn addiction and porn use – not between porn addiction and religion or MI. Their results are consistent with porn addiction. Period.
The MI campaign hits a wall
Here are some of the actual findings from the new study, which gut the MI model.
Frequency of porn use was by far the strongest of the analyzed predictors (consistent with addiction).
MI correlated with compulsive porn use, compulsive internet use, compulsive social networking and gaming – all to a similar degree.
There was an insignificant correlation between compulsive porn use and religiosity. So, no support for Grubbs et al’s cherished meme that religious shame explains porn addiction.
Here are some excerpts:
In short, individuals who are unable to control a behavior despite negative consequences, score somewhat higher on moral disapproval of the behavior (MI). And this study (and others) find that it’s not MI but higher levels of porn use that best predict porn addiction, by far. As for religion “causing” porn addiction, that too was debunked. In the table below frequency of porn use is robustly correlated with pornography addiction (0.42), yet has little correlation with religiosity (0.03).
Beware of sexologists still pushing the discredited MI model
As mentioned above, the “moral incongruence” meme-campaign has momentum that will carry it forward for some time. Many academics who peer-review articles will no doubt remain in their ill-informed, pro-porn sexology bubble. They may rubber-stamp results they like, unaware of the new research that shows the MI model always rested on a house of cards (now collapsed). The porn industry will continue to trumpet such results to protect its profits.
As an example, consider this new study in which a team of sexology researchers tried very hard to link MI with “shame-proneness” as a way of convincing people that shame causes people to perceive themselves as addicted (or “dysregulated” as these anti-addiction researchers label compulsive use). Their hypothesis failed, and one can almost hear lead author Brian A. Droubay (anti-porn addiction proponent) gnashing his teeth.
In this study, MI correlated with “feelings of dysregulated porn use” (as it does in all behavioral addictions). But the “shame-proneness” correlation was insignificant. Maybe Droubay should spend some time on the online recovery forums reading what users actually report instead of trusting to his outdated assumptions about religious shaming.
If Droubay himself was shamed about his sexuality that is extremely unfortunate. But if he is ex-religious or anti-“morality,” like many pro-porn academics, perhaps he should recuse himself from the debate. It may be clouding his perception and ability to design impartial research, as it has for some of his most vocal fellow sexologists.
Droubay and colleagues’ introduction is a hymn of praise to the work of some of the most pro-porn authors (Prause, Ley, Walton, Reid, Cantor and Grubbs and colleagues), ignoring much of the research that runs counter to their preferred narrative. Astonishingly, they don’t even fully acknowledge that “Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder” (the new diagnosis in the ICD-11 diagnostic manual adopted last year by the World Health Organization) definitely encompasses compulsive porn use!
Instead they try to persuade the reader that desire to masturbate (presumably to porn) is just evidence of high sexual desire – even though high desire may also indicate addictive cravings. Incidentally, these researchers never mention that multiple studies have distinguished dysregulated use from actual sexual desire. The two are not the same, but pro-porn sexologists consistently pretend that these concepts are interchangeable.
Tellingly, the authors gathered, but didn’t report, the correlation between frequency of porn viewing and feeling dysregulated. My guess is that it would have been stronger than the MI correlation they wanted to emphasize. Instead they excluded frequency of porn viewing and argued that, in any case, frequency would best be viewed as…you guessed it…a measure of “solitary sexual desire” than a measure of dysregulation.
Conclusion
The amount of damage done and misinformation spread via the “moral incongruence model” myth is incalculable. The public has been gravely misled about the source of porn addicts’ distress. Atheist and agnostic porn users may erroneously believe they are safe from porn addiction because they have no moral scruples about its use. And worst of all many healthcare providers have been deceived. They’ve fallen for the myth that porn addiction isn’t real and thus can’t be diagnosed, so they don’t bother assessing for it properly using existing assessments.
It’s time to stamp out the myth that MI tells us anything useful about porn-induced problems, so that it and its progeny stop distorting the field of porn addiction research. Porn addiction is every bit as real and risky as gaming and gambling addiction. It has never been reducible to “shame” no matter how skillfully any agenda-driven research is executed or sold to the public.
The MI myth was never anything more than propaganda. Time to let it go.
Formal criticisms (by researchers) of “Pornography Problems Due to Moral Incongruence: An Integrative Model with a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis” (2018):
How did I become the target of Nicole Prause? Below the official YBOP press release, I provide details to help readers understand my legal victory and Prause’s 7-year ‘reign of terror’ that led to it. Spoiler alert: She brought this all on herself.
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PRESS RELEASE:
Gary Wilson (Your Brain on Porn) Wins Legal Victory Against Sexologist Nicole Prause’s Efforts to Silence Him
Vocal porn researcher’s attempted restraining order denied as frivolous; must pay substantial attorney fees in a SLAPP ruling.
ASHLAND, OREGON: August 16, 2020: Best-selling author and public health advocate Gary Wilson has won a legal victory against sexology researcher and pornography proponent Nicole Prause. On August 6, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled that Prause’s attempt to obtain a restraining order against Wilson constituted a frivolous and illegal “strategic lawsuit against public participation” (commonly called a “SLAPP suit”). In essence, the Court found that Prause abused the restraining order process to bully Wilson into silence and undercut his rights to free speech. By law, the SLAPP ruling obligates Prause to pay Wilson’s attorney fees.
“It is ironic that the porn industry cloaks itself in First Amendment protections while porn proponents like Nicole Prause attempt to limit and silence criticism about the well-documented risks of porn’s harm to its users and to the public,” Wilson said after the Court ruling. “This is another important victory over the defamation and harassment endured by advocates who dare to speak publicly about porn’s harms.“
The legal victory comes on the heels of a complaint against UK-based SCRAM Media for publishing a story falsely claiming that Prause had received “death threats” as the consequence of a crowdfunding campaign by NoFap host, Alex Rhodes. According to a UK press release, the SCRAM story falsely stated that NoFap and Rhodes affiliated themselves with right-wing extremists (including anti-Semites); incited extremists to harass Prause; conducted a crowdfund that led to Prause being stalked; and filed a frivolous lawsuit in US Federal Court in order to stymie Prause’s academic research. When presented with evidence disproving those claims, SCRAM retracted the article, paid Rhodes substantial damages and legal costs, and apologized publicly, before shutting down entirely.
Details related to Prause’s attempted restraining order and my successful SLAPP suit
When I say an entire book could be filled with Prause’s egregious actions I am not exaggerating. While only the tip of the Prause iceberg, the 3 main pages documenting Prause egregious actions (page 1, page 2, page 3) fill over 1,500 pages when copied and pasted into a Word document. Suffice it to say, we can only touch on a few relevant highlights – just enough so the reader can understand the primary reason why Prause has been so hell-bent on taking down YBOP.
Never heard of Prause until David Ley and she published a March, 2013 Psychology Today blog post targeting me and my website (YBOP)
Prause’s carefully orchestrated PR campaign resulted in worldwide media coverage with all the headlines claiming that sex addiction had been debunked(!). A few days later I posted a short Psychology Today blog post raising questions about the content of the David Ley post (the original blog posts are archived here).
Prause has yet to refute a single word of my March, 2013 Psychology Today post, or the critique I wrote in July after her EEG study finally was published. Nor has Prause refuted a single word of the 8 peer-reviewed critiques of Steele et al. which expose the Ley/Prause blog post as fiction and Prause’s EEG results as actually consistent with the addiction model.
On April 10, 2013 a petulant Prause initiated contact, then accused my wife and me of stalking her
As you can see, Prause is accusing my wife and me of stalking her, although all I did was respond to two emails she sent my way. This was the starting point for Prause’s fabricated, never-ending “stalking” claims.
Three months later, immediately after I published my critique of Steele et al., 2013, Prause initiated her public “Gary Wilson is a stalker” campaign. She created numerous aliases to defame and harass me, including two YouTube channels: GaryWilson Stalker and GaryWilson IsAFraud. A screenshot of my YouTube inbox from July 26, 2013 reveals Prause’s obsessive cyberstalking:
Below is just one example of dozens posted during this period. As usual Prause’s aliases accuse Gary Wilson of “stalking a female scientist”:
As it turns out, I was not the only one to be honored with her false stalking accusations. Over the next several years Prause falsely accused numerous individuals and organizations of stalking, sexual harasFexamplsment, and sending death or rape threats.
In this way, Prause carefully crafted a mythology of her victim-hood, although she was the perpetrator bent on destroying others’ lives. While Prause had defamed Alex Rhodes and Don Hilton for years, both drew the line at her false accusations of stalking and sexual harassment. Two Federal defamation suits against Prause followed – Donald Hilton, MD and Nofap founder Alexander Rhodes.
The intensity of Prause’s defamation and cyberstalking grows exponentially, forcing me to create a record
As a darling of the porn industry, Prause began putting her name to falsehoods, and openly cyber-harassing multiple individuals and organizations on social media and elsewhere. At the time, I was the primary target of Prause’s hundreds of social media comments along with behind-the-scenes email campaigns.
Within a short time she targeted others, including researchers, medical doctors, therapists, psychologists, a former UCLA colleague, a UK charity, men in recovery, a TIME magazine editor, several professors, IITAP, SASH, Fight The New Drug, Exodus Cry, NoFap.com, RebootNation, YourBrainRebalanced, the academic journal Behavioral Sciences, its parent company MDPI, US Navy medical doctors, the head of the academic journal CUREUS, and the journal Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity (See – Numerous Victims of Nicole Prause’s Malicious Reporting and Malicious Use of Process).
While spending her waking hours harassing and defaming, Prause cleverly continued to cultivate – with zero verifiable evidence – the myth that she was “the victim” of most anyone who dared to disagree with her assertions surrounding porn’s effects or the current state of porn research. To counter the ongoing harassment and false claims, I was compelled to document Prause’s tweets, posts and activities on the following pages. This was done for her victims’ protection, and crucial for any future legal actions. (Additional incidents have occurred that we are not at liberty to divulge – as Prause’s victims fear further retribution, and no doubt still others occurred that we will never know.)
These 3 pages exposing the truth were the bane of Prause’s existence, as they crack the illusion of her carefully curated public image as a courageous victim of stalking, rape, and now, death threats. What’s next?
Prause multi-pronged campaign to remove the damning evidence of her harassment, defamation and cyberstalking
Prause explored multiple avenues in her determination to have the above pages removed (or YBOP shut down) in order to bury evidence of her egregious behavior.
For example, in 2018, Prause filed 3 bogus, and unsuccessful, DMCA take-downs with YBOP’s webhost, seeking to have screenshots of her own defamatory tweets removed. A DMCA takedown notice is used to have copyrighted materials removed from a website. Prause filed a DMCA takedown as a backdoor way to have the pages chronicling her harassment and defamation removed or gutted. All 3 attempts were rebuffed as tweets are not copyrighted material.
In April of 2019, Prause launched a trademark infringing site (realyourbrainonporn.com). The imposter site employed many tactics calculated to confuse the public. For example, the new site attempted to trick visitors, with the center of each page declaring “Welcome to the REAL Your Brain On Porn,” while the tab falsely proclaimed “Your Brain On Porn.”
In a startling “coincidence,” Prause’s legal counsel for the trademark disputes is Wayne B. Giampietro, one of the primary lawyers defending Backpage.com. Backpage was shut down by the federal government “for its willful facilitation of human trafficking and prostitution.” (See this USA Today article: 93-count indictment on sex trafficking charges revealed against Backpage founders).
On November 19, 2019 Prause turned to threatening YBOP’s webhost Linode with a bogus cease & desist letter, again signed by sex-industry lawyer Wayne Giampietro. Misusing the California “Safe At Home Program”, Prause’s Cease & Desist letter falsely claimed her address is on YBOP (it wasn’t). Linode never informed me about Prause’s unfounded C&D letter because they had no reason to act on it (Prause provided no URLs or screenshots). Instead, the C&D was forwarded to me from the owner of a YouTube channel whom Prause had successfully silenced with empty legal threats based on false assertions that YBOP (to which he linked) contained her home address.Rebuffed by Linode, Prause tried a second C&D, this time directly enlisting the California Attorney General to assist her under false pretenses (January 29, 2020). Once again, Linode confirmed that YBOP had not published Prause’s address (as before, Prause failed to provide any URLs of pages containing her address).
When Prause doubled down, I exposed her lies with this article. She responded by calling the Ashland Police department here in OR and filing for a temporary restraining order (TRO) in Los Angeles Superior Court
When the California AG couldn’t locate her address on YBOP, Prause resorted to badgering my local police (Ashland, Oregon) to take action against me (February 12, 2020). The officer determined that Prause’s assertions did not allege a crime (in any case, her home address was not on YBOP) and that this was a civil disagreement. He declined to act.
On the same day, Prause then publicly announced she was seeking a restraining order against me, and did so ex parte (without having to notify me, so no service):
You can always tell when Prause is lying, as she cannot provide a screenshot or link that remotely supports her claims. Prause’s earlier tweets expose her as lying. In fact, she herself publicly boasted that no one has ever posted her home address because she has posted only fake addresses on the internet:
The above is nothing less than Prause gleefully admitting she lied to the California Attorney General that she was “unsafe,” and attempting to bolster her malicious restraining order.
The judge denied the February 13th temporary restraining order (TRO) as it lacked evidence that I was a threat, and set a hearing for a regular restraining order on March 6, 2020. Perpetuating her faux victim-hood, Prause falsely claims the judge felt I needed to address my stalking:
I did not attend a mediation. It was optional and I declined.
Once again, I was forced to hire lawyers to deal with Prause’s misuse of the legal system. To everyone’s surprise, the second judge, instead of dismissing the entire matter, continued the hearing until March 25, 2020. Then COVID-19 hit.
Prause fabricates “evidence,” which included doxxing and defaming my son
In Prause’s request for the restraining order she perjured herself, saying I posted her address on YBOP and Twitter (perjury is nothing new with Prause). In the tallest of tales, Prause claimed I was dangerous because my adult son and I were “gun enthusiasts” who had “nothing to lose.”
She purported to “prove” this by including an old photo of my son (taller man) and a young man of Asian decent posing with guns. Prause claimed the shorter, 20-something young man was me! Prause deliberately mislead the court.
The above is one of three pictures of my son Prause inserted into her lie-filled restraining order request. Prause searched through my son’s private Facebook to locate any picture she could misrepresent.
The truth: Neither I nor my son own guns. The above picture is from 2014, and was taken at the weapons locker by a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy (for the 2 young men to use as a meme generator). It was a joke. As explained in his affidavit (below) my son had spent several months working with the California Department of Justice, building new IT technology to assist the Gang Suppression Unit with their duties. As my son stated in his sworn affidavit, the other person was an intern at the tech company.
This gross misrepresentation, acquired via cyberstalking my son, is a perfect example of how Nicole Prause fabricates her so-called “evidence.”
Prause provides no verifiable evidence to support her other claim: that I posted her address on YBOP
Prause’s other main assertion is that I placed her home address on YBOP. Not so. Her home address has never been on YBOP. Did Prause’s TRO contain a screenshot or a URL to support this assertion? No. Only an email from a Liberos board member (Prause’s company), and collaborator on Prause’s controversial Orgasmic Meditation studies, Greg Siegle:
Why can’t Siegle or Prause provide a screenshot or URL to support their assertion? Because both are lying. It never ceases to amaze me how Prause hypnotizes her buddies to lie for her.
Unlike Siegle and Prause I have hard evidence. I submitted this email from my web host confirming that Prause failed to provide any actionable requests (i.e. URLs of pages allegedly containing her address). Put simply, Prause lied in her TRO: Her home address was never on YBOP.
The rest of her claims were equally unfounded.
She claimed that I have a second Twitter account that actively reveals her home address, and that her home address and pictures are on my website. As usual, she provided no screenshots or URLs to support her allegations. That’s because both claims are false, although images of many of her tweets (some with her smiling face) are indeed on YBOP, as that is how I document her ongoing malicious activity. I assume members of the public may be interested in evidence that points to her potential bias and close ties to the porn industry. Her tweets are public. Below, I provide PDFs of documents filed in my opposition to Prause’s initial Restraining Order request:
With the lies in her original TRO exposed, Prause’s July 2020 declaration places all its eggs into the “Germany basket”
With the “evidence” in her original TRO exposed as fabrications, Prause’s July 2020 declaration (prepared for the August 6th hearing) spun a new tale surrounding my 2018 trip to Germany to attend the 5th International Conference on Behavioral Addictions (ICBA). Prause committed perjury in her TRO declaration, falsely claiming she was a scheduled presenter for the ICBA, and that I traveled to Germany solely to “confront her.” Nonsense, and yet much of Prause’s opposition to my anti-SLAPP now hinged on this single assertion.
Here is one of 5 excerpts from her July declaration referring to my trip to Germany:
The sentence following her Germany claim is very telling: “Whether that is true or not.” Let me help: It’s not true. Important to note that my Germany trip was “thebasis of Prause’s current request for relief.” If any part of Prause’s Germany story is debunked, her entire case falls apart like Humpty-Dumpty. Again, this carefully worded suggestion is the only “evidence” Prause’s lawyer dared to supply:
Subsequently, Prause has encountered several incidents where she believed she was being surveilled at home or work by an unidentified man. Whether that is true or not, the basis of Prause’s current request for relief is the manifestation of the ongoing feud into the threat of physical confrontation.
I knew this was bunkum so I asked ICBA organizers to confirm that Prause was never asked to present and was never registered for the conference. Their letter confirming that Prause perjured herself:
Caught in yet another lie.
Just for the record, Prause has never attended or been invited to present at an ICBA conference. Prause doesn’t believe in behavioral addictions. Throughout her entire career Prause has waged a war against the concept of behavioral addiction, especially sex and porn addiction.
Prause brought this legal outcome upon herself (even her lawyer tried to quit because she attempted to force him to behave unethically)
Anyone can file a restraining order without even paying a filing fee. In other words, it was a very cost-effective way to attempt to add credibility to the smear campaign that she and her chums have been pursuing. I believe it was, in part, an attempt to suppress my speech as she hoped I’d be unable to defend myself. She had initially told the judge I was indigent (“had nothing to lose”) in her TRO request. She may have assumed I was indigent because, despite having abundant good cause, I had never filed a defamation suit against her. I didn’t want to waste my time.
I believe her restraining order attempt was also an attempt to discredit me as a witness in the two defamation suits others have filed against Prause. It failed, and has now further discredited her instead. What goes around….
The initial judge denied Prause a temporary restraining order in February, 2020, when she filed it without notice to me. This was a loud signal to her that she had a weak case. Denial of the TRO meant that Prause had to inform me about the restraining order, and it was set for an initial hearing, which led to a second hearing, as Prause still had not served me properly.
For the next 3 months, Prause could have dropped the restraining order with no repercussions to herself, and I would have been stuck with my attorney fees without much recourse. In June, partly to avoid being in Prause’s presence at the hearing scheduled for July, and partly in response to being unjustly accused of having threatened by her in order to suppress my voice, I filed an anti-SLAPP motion to have the restraining order dropped. At that point, she could only go forward. Court documents filed in my anti-SLAPP motion:
I filed my motion in part because Prause had begun slapping baseless small claims court ‘defamation’ suits on people, which require defendants to be served in CA. I was confident that she would serve me with one of her nuisance small claims court suits if I came to CA to testify for the restraining order hearing.
As it turns out, the judge combined the two matters, and both Prause and I were able to participate remotely (due to Covid 19). This spared me from going anywhere near her, thankfully. Perhaps its evident that, far from physically threatening her, I’ve been assiduously avoiding her presence. My August 5th, court filings responding to Prause’s July 29 declaration:
Shortly before the August 6 hearing, her own attorney tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from representing her. One of his reasons, according to his Declaration, was that she was attempting to force him to behave unethically, that is, to do something he could not do in good faith. We know from his filing seeking a continuance that she had tried to make him submit a lot of inadmissible “evidence” (likely in the form of letters from her friends, and unsupported accusations), so we suspect he was referring to this.
Her attorney also asked to withdraw because she was apparently threatening him with suit because he wouldn’t do her bidding. He stated that communications with Prause had irretrievably broken down. This occurred after he filed her reply to my anti-SLAPP motion (and there was no further legal work to be done short of the hearing itself).
The judge decided not to delay the hearing, and Prause was represented by the firm’s of-counsel attorney, who did an excellent job on her behalf – although he had little to work with by the time all the evidentiary objections were dealt with.
Prior to the hearing, Prause went on Twitter to announce that she had a “protective order” against me, inciting her devoted followers to cyber-stalk me:
Yet another lie of astonishing proportions. And not one that most judges would take kindly to.
Incidentally, in order to grant my anti-SLAPP motion, the judge had to find that her restraining order was unlikely to succeed on its merits, and that it was, in fact, an attempt to suppress my rights to speak out on a matter of public interest.
The bottom line is that Prause brought the anti-SLAPP motion loss upon herself by filing, and then not dropping, her baseless restraining order against me. She clinched it by threatening her own attorney and by announcing prematurely that she had won. Once again, she was the perpetrator not the victim.
The legal system is not social media, and the fabricated “evidence” and false accusations that she and her cronies disperse in the court of public opinion do not fly in real courts. This is why SCRAM lost when it printed her lies, and it does not bode well for her chances in either of the two defamation suits against her.
Gary Wilson (Your Brain on Porn) Wins Legal Victory Against Sexologist Nicole Prause’s Efforts to Silence Him
Vocal porn researcher’s attempted restraining order denied as frivolous; must pay substantial attorney fees in a SLAPP ruling.
ASHLAND, OREGON: August 16, 2020: Best-selling author and public health advocate Gary Wilson has won a legal victory against sexology researcher and pornography proponent Nicole Prause. On August 6, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled that Prause’s attempt to obtain a restraining order against Wilson constituted a frivolous and illegal “strategic lawsuit against public participation” (commonly called a “SLAPP suit”). In essence, the Court found that Prause abused the restraining order process to bully Wilson into silence and undercut his rights to free speech. By law, the SLAPP ruling obligates Prause to pay Wilson’s attorney fees.
“It is ironic that the porn industry cloaks itself in First Amendment protections while porn proponents like Nicole Prause attempt to limit and silence criticism about the well-documented risks of porn’s harm to its users and to the public,” Wilson said after the Court ruling. “This is another important victory over the defamation and harassment endured by advocates who dare to speak publicly about porn’s harms.“
The legal victory comes on the heels of a complaint against UK-based SCRAM Media for publishing a story falsely claiming that Prause had received “death threats” as the consequence of a crowdfunding campaign by NoFap host, Alex Rhodes. According to a UK press release, the SCRAM story falsely stated that NoFap and Rhodes affiliated themselves with right-wing extremists (including anti-Semites); incited extremists to harass Prause; conducted a crowdfund that led to Prause being stalked; and filed a frivolous lawsuit in US Federal Court in order to stymie Prause’s academic research. When presented with evidence disproving those claims, SCRAM retracted the article, paid Rhodes substantial damages and legal costs, and apologized publicly, before shutting down entirely.
Prause is being sued in two unrelated federal civil lawsuits accusing her of making knowingly false and damaging statements about people who have raised concerns about internet porn: Donald L. Hilton, Jr. v. Nicole Prause, et al., United States District Court for the Western District of Texas San Antonio Division, Case No. 5: 19-CV-00755-OLG; and Alexander Rhodes v. Nicole Prause, et al., United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Case No. 2:19-cv-01366. In those cases, the plaintiffs allege Prause made untrue, defamatory statements accusing them of stalking, sexual harassment, and antisemitism, and claiming they were under investigation by law enforcement and professional licensing bodies. In each case, numerous men and women have come forward with sworn statements that Prause has also targeted them.
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For media enquiries, please contact ‘Press’ at Your Brain On Porn
As men who have quit porn and recovered from sexual dysfunctions (during partnered sex) demonstrate, porn-induced ED appears to be primarily due to conditioning their sexual response to online porn rather than real partners. Their difficulties are not due to “hypersexuality.” In fact, men who report the problem are–just as this 2020 paper suggests–sometimes “hypersexuals” and sometimes not.
There are two ways the men figure out that porn use caused their difficulties:
One simple test healthcare providers might employ is to ask, “whether the patient can achieve and sustain a satisfactory erection (and climax as desired) when masturbating without using Internet pornography”. If he cannot, but can easily achieve these goals with Internet pornography, then his sexual dysfunction may be associated with its use.
Eliminating internet porn for a time and seeing improvements in their sexual response, as multiple case studies and other papers have reported. (More below)
For more on porn conditioning watch this video by a recovered man.
The new 2020 paper: it can tell us nothing about porn-induced sexual problems
A carefully organized press campaign was created to “interpret” this paper for propaganda purposes just as it became publicly available. Predictably, given that most of this study’s authors are members of a blatantly pro-porn website (that infringes on the trademark of my site, and tweets and curates cherry-picked research that props us the porn industry’s interests), the related propaganda proclaimed that PIED was disproved.
In response to this orchestrated campaign, a neuroscientist tweeted, observing that the propagandists were employing, “the same fallacy as saying Pavlov’s dog is still able to salivate (to the sound of bells!), therefore there is no conditioning effect.” Why would he say this? Because the researchers hadn’t properly tested for the hypothesis that porn use can condition sexual response–and not just in “hypersexuals.” Yet the propagandists act as if they had.
Thus, although porn shills like David Ley claim this paper provides evidence against porn-induced sexual dysfunction (PIED), it actually tells us nothing about it.
To begin, PIED is the inability to achieve erection with a partner. (In some men, the reduced pleasure response behind this conditioning grows so severe that they eventually notice impaired response even when using porn, but that is uncommon.)
The fact is that men with PIED can usually achieve an erection with porn. After all, their arousal is conditioned to porn! They can “salivate to a bell,” but they may also be so conditioned to porn that they have difficulty with partnered sex, or even getting erections without porn. The researchers didn’t check for the latter conditions.
In any case, this study didn’t assess PIED. It only assessed sexual response while viewing porn. And all of the subjects (MSM, or men who have sex with men) were porn consumers – although the researchers didn’t share the measure they used to determine this in their write-up.
The point is that both subjects and controls had already had the opportunity to condition their sexual response to porn. Neither subjects nor controls were asked to eliminate its use to see if their sexual function improved (the most reliable way to determine if PIED conditioning is at work).
While it is interesting that there wasn’t a significant difference between “hypersexuals” and others, this result does not negate the potential of porn use to condition sexual response in porn consumers.
Although these authors deny it, PIED is a “thing.” Seven peer-reviewed papers have so far demonstrated that when patients eliminated digital porn use, chronic sexual dysfunctions healed. There are some 32 additional studies linking porn use to sexual problems or low arousal during partnered sex. Studies with excerpts.
It is concerning, but not surprising, that Dr. Ley and others would misrepresent PIED and twist irrelevant findings into unsupported propaganda. He is being compensated by the porn industry to assure porn users that its consumption is harmless.
The new paper does not “replicate” a 2007 experiment
Porn industry shill and co-author of this paper Prause and her sidekick Ley mistakenly claim that this new paper is the same as experiments described in 2007 in a book chapter by Bancroft and Janssen (also a co-author of this new paper). “The Psychophysiology of Sex., Chapter: The Dual-Control Model: The role of sexual inhibition & excitation in sexual arousal and behavior.” Publisher: Indiana University Press, Editor: Erick Janssen, pp.197-222. Link to chapter
Yet this new paper is not the same as the earlier experiments, and here are some of the differences:
Difference#1 – The 2007 study interviewed the men who couldn’t get aroused by porn to assess the likely cause.
First, unlike the new 2020 study, the 2007 researchers interviewed the 50% of young men (average age 29) who mysteriously weren’t becoming aroused by test porn in the lab, and hypothesized that increasing exposure to porn was the likely cause. The scientists explained that the men frequented bars where porn had become omnipresent. Excerpt from the 2007 study:
When we applied this design (with the two types of sexual film, distraction and performance demand) to this new sample, however, we encountered another unanticipated, yet intriguing, phenomenon. Twelve men, or almost 50% of the first 25 subjects (mean age = 29 years), did not respond to the sexual stimuli (i.e., penile rigidity of less than 5% to the noncoercive film clips; 8 men had 0% rigidity). This is, to our knowledge, one of the few psychophysiological studies in which men participated who were recruited from the community–in our case, from bath houses, STD clinics, bars, and so on.
In some of these venues, sexual stimuli (including video screens) are omnipresent, and this, in combination with comments from participants about the lack of more interesting, specialized (“niche”), or more extreme or “kinky” stimuli, made us consider the possibility that the unusually high rate of nonresponders could be related to high levels of exposure to and experience with sexually explicit materials.
Difference #2 – the 2007 study determined porn use was cause!
The researchers also noted that, “Conversations with the subjects reinforced our idea that in some of them a high exposure to erotica seemed to have resulted in a lower responsivity to vanilla sex erotica and increased need for novelty, variation.”
Conversations with the subjects reinforced our idea that in some of them a high exposure to erotica seemed to have resulted in a lower responsivity to “vanilla sex” erotica and an increased need for novelty and variation, in some cases combined with a need for very specific types of stimuli in order to get aroused.
Difference#3 -2007 study added a 2nd experiment based on porn-induced low arousal.
The researchers even added a second experiment to take into account porn-induced low arousal. The second experiment included newer, longer, more varied clips, and allowed subjects to choose clips themselves. Still many didn’t respond!
We redesigned the study and decided to eliminate the distraction and performance demand manipulations and to include newer, more varied clips, as well as some longer film clips. Also, instead of presenting subjects with a set of preselected (“researcher-selected”) videos only, we let them choose two clips themselves from a set of 10, of which 10-second previews were shown and that included a wider range of sexual behaviors (e.g., group sex, interracial sex, S & M, etc.). We recruited an additional 51 subjects and found that with the improved design still 20 men, or approximately 25%, did not respond well to the sexual video clips (penile rigidity of less than 10% in response to the long self-selected film).
The 2007 experiments assessed “low responders” individually, and reported that: “the analyses suggested that as the number of erotic films seen within the past year increased a participant was more likely to be classified as a low responder.”
Difference#4 – 2007 study did not assess hypersexuality
The 2007 experiments did not assess hypersexuality. The 2020 study did, and compared a hypersexuality group to controls. (Yet there was no individual assessment of contributing factors to ED, as in 2007). That said, the 2020 hypersexual group had less genital response to porn than control group:
The authors then “controlled” for somewhat arbitrary factors – so as to artificially equalize the responses of the two groups and conclude that the groups did not respond differently from each other. Again predictable, given their pro-porn sympathies.
So, beware of porn shills shrieking untruths. Consider the source, and look carefully at the underlying findings. As is so often the case, the propaganda about this paper does not mirror its actual, inconclusive content.
Porn addiction doesn’t exist! At least, that’s the mantra of porn-harms science-deniers. In a frenzied attempt to cover up the harms of porn on the brain, a group of scientists are hell-bent on convincing people that porn addiction doesn’t exist.
Known as “Real Your Brain on Porn”, this group (or certain individuals who represent this group) go to great lengths to dismiss, minimise and publicly attack anyone who speaks up about the harms of porn. The name of this group sounds deceivingly similar to the world-renowned and well-respected “Your Brain on Porn” site, run by Gary Wilson. Gary was among the first to raise the alarm as to what regular porn use is doing to some brains in his 2012 TEDx talk, The Great Porn Experiment.
Needless to say, Gary has received nothing but what can only be described as relentless harassment from this group. Why? Because he highlights the science that affirms addiction and other porn-related harms, phenomena observed by researchers, clinicians and therapists all over the world. Gary has even found himself having to defend his Your Brain on Porn trademark from those who actively seek to undermine his contributions. Additionally, those who speak out against porn harms are being forced to defend themselves through costly, drawn-out lawsuits and other public or legal battles.
For the sake of staying on point, I won’t detail the horrific antics because Gary has documented them here, here, here and here.
So is porn addiction real or not?
Given I’m not a neuroscientist or clinician, I will leave the explanation of what’s going on with the brain to the experts.
In 2016, Paula Hall, a leading expert in the field of sex and porn addiction, states:
Sex addiction is a real problem, but professionals can’t agree if addiction is the right name for it. Or if it should be called an impulse control disorder or hypersexuality or sexual compulsivity and a whole host of other names. And until we do get an accurate clinical diagnosis, chances are that doubts and misunderstandings will continue. But professionals do agree that more and more people are struggling with sexual behaviours that feel out of their control.
For most, that includes internet pornography, but for some, it’s also cybersex, visiting sex workers, cruising, multiple affairs, dating sites. The type of behaviour is not what defines it as an addiction, but the dependency on it. When we talk about alcohol addiction, we don’t differentiate between those who drink whiskey or beer or tequila. And alcohol addiction is defined as a dependency on alcohol to make my film more manageable. And of course, there are lots of people who can drink alcohol recreationally—maybe even a little too much at times—but they don’t become dependent on it. You know you’re addicted to alcohol if it’s causing significant problems in your life, but in spite of those problems, you still can’t control your drinking or stop. And the same is true for those who become dependent on internet pornography or any other kind of sexual behaviour. The reason that many people prefer the name addiction, including myself, is because that’s actually how people who struggle with this say that it feels. It feels like an addiction. There’s also a growing body of research that is showing that compulsive pornography use impacts the brain in a very similar way to chemical dependencies … One only needs to read the comments from people at the bottom of Paula’s TEDx talk to see how relieved people are to gain understanding about a range of behaviours under the banner of “sex addiction”, of which, one is porn addiction.
When Dr Donald Hilton was asked in 2015, “Do you think porn addiction has been proven beyond doubt?”, he responded by saying: To me, the proof has been there for several years.
Sex addiction and porn addiction are an outworking of compulsive sexual behaviour, often incorrectly presumed to result due to some form of underlying trauma. However, Dr Rob Weiss has the following to say:
“For a long time, therapists treating sex and porn addiction found that all (or at least the vast majority) of their clients had deep and powerful underlying early-life trauma issues—neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, covert incest, etc. This put sex and porn addicts very much in line with alcoholics, drug addicts, compulsive gamblers, and the like. In fact, there is a large body of research showing unresolved early-life trauma to be a huge risk factor for later-life addiction (of all types).
Recently, however, sexual disorders therapists like myself have encountered a new and rapidly growing subcategory of sex and porn addicts. These are individuals who readily meet the criteria for sex and porn addiction but lack the underlying early-life trauma that typically drives an addiction.”
Gabe Deem, the founder of Reboot Nation, often describes this group of consumers as “opportunity addicts”. This is when someone develops porn addiction because they enjoy the content—then they develop emotional, social or mental health issues as a result of excessive porn use.
Aside from doing all they can to deny the impacts of porn on the brain, porn-harms science-deniers typically create contention and unnecessary confusion around the supposed difference between “compulsive sexual behaviour” and “addiction”. Yet those suffering from compulsive behaviour are less concerned with labels and more concerned with getting help. The new CSBD diagnosis will make that help possible.
Interestingly, most of the research on which the world health experts relied upon when adopting “Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder” was done on internet pornography users. In adopting the new diagnosis, it’s clear that the experts were concerned about the potential impact of today’s pornography on users’ health.
So where does one get clarity?
When a person is struggling with the amount of porn they use or the impacts it’s having on their relationships, a starting point would be to assess their behaviours using the ICD-11 diagnostic tool that defines compulsive sexual behaviour disorder. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is produced by the World Health Organisation, a global health agency with a constitutional public health mission, while the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is produced by a single national professional association (in the U.S.). The DSM uses the ICD coding and was last updated in 2013. It’s already out of date in the fast-moving world of pornography research. The new ICD diagnosis is being used by academics, and others will incorporate it over time.
The ICD-11 states that compulsive sexual behaviour disorder is characterized by a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour. Symptoms may include repetitive sexual activities becoming a central focus of the person’s life to the point of neglecting health and personal care or other interests, activities and responsibilities; numerous unsuccessful efforts to significantly reduce repetitive sexual behaviour; and continued repetitive sexual behaviour despite adverse consequences or deriving little or no satisfaction from it. The pattern of failure to control intense, sexual impulses or urges and resulting repetitive sexual behaviour is manifested over an extended period of time (e.g., 6 months or more), and causes marked distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. Distress that is entirely related to moral judgments and disapproval about sexual impulses, urges, or behaviours is not sufficient to meet this requirement.
While addiction is not mentioned in the definition and guidelines for diagnosing someone with compulsive sexual behaviour (CSB) disorder, a person with addictive sexual behaviours, including compulsive pornography use, would meet the above test.
Where can porn addicts find more information … and hope?
There are several things someone can do when they recognise their consumption is out of control or bordering on porn addiction.
Take a look at the ICD-11 definition of Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder and reflect on whether this could apply. Avoid the urge to try and self-diagnose, but this could be a useful yard-stick to start finding answers.
Seek professional help from someone well-informed about behavioural addictions.
Read about other people’s experiences. Great places to start are on forums such as NoFap and Reboot Nation – millions of people struggle with porn addiction, and online communities can help give hope and encouragement for those who previously felt they were alone. Who better to learn from than those who have recovered or are facing the same challenges!
Expand your understanding of why pornography is a public health crisis. Every click creates demand for exploitation, and porn sites are complicit in allowing child sexual exploitation material, revenge porn, rape and other non-consensual materials on their sites.
If you have kids, it’s likely that you don’t want them to struggle with porn addiction so it’s important to reframe your understanding and pass on helpful information for their healthy sexual development. Visit the Culture Reframed Parents Program to help you build young people’s resilience and resistance. Also, Porn Resilient Kids equips families for tricky conversations through educational resources and blogs, children’s books, resource links and a closed Facebook group.
If you are still confused, know this: The porn industry is well-aware that their content is addictive and they’ve been known to brag about it. If you are one of the millions who have been caught up in their targeted efforts to create life-long consumers, you are not alone and you can recover. I’m told that it is harder to kick than cigarettes, but the health benefits are overwhelmingly worth it.
Next time someone says porn addiction doesn’t exist, ask more questions, look behind the smokescreen, and form your own conclusion. The weight of the evidence does not favour the deniers. I’ll just keep educating and encouraging people to raise kids with skills for critical porn analysis—until a new generation of scientists can all see through the industry’s smokescreen and add to our understanding of porn addiction. Currently, it’s a condition that impacts millions because of the unregulated industry that drives it.
If you or loved ones are struggling with pornography’s impacts, you need to know that you are not alone. Click through for educational information, resources and links to online support services. And if you are looking for a presenter, professional development, curriculum to deliver in schools, or support for families, visit Youth Wellbeing Project and send us an email.
About Liz Walker
An accredited sexuality educator, speaker, author, Liz Walker is dedicated to culture-shifting initiatives that respond to pornography harms on children & young people.
In 2013 former UCLA researcher Nicole Prause began openly harassing, libeling and cyberstalking Gary Wilson. (Prause has not been employed by an academic institution since January, 2015.) Within a short time she also began targeting others, including researchers, medical doctors, therapists, psychologists, a former UCLA colleague, a UK charity, men in recovery, a TIME magazine editor, several professors, IITAP, SASH, Fight The New Drug, Exodus Cry, NoFap.com, RebootNation, YourBrainRebalanced, the academic journal Behavioral Sciences, its parent company MDPI, US Navy medical doctors, the head of the academic journal CUREUS, and the journal Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity (See – Numerous Victims of Nicole Prause’s Malicious Reporting and Malicious Use of Process).
While spending her waking hours harassing others, Prause cleverly cultivated – with zero verifiable evidence – a myth that she was “the victim” of most anyone who dared to disagree with her assertions surrounding porn’s effects or the current state of porn research. To counter the ongoing harassment and false claims, YBOP was compelled to document some of Prause’s activities. Consider the following pages. (Additional incidents have occurred that we are not at liberty to divulge – as Prause’s victims fear further retribution.)
In the beginning Prause employed dozens of fake usernames to post on porn recovery forums, Quora, Wikipedia, and in the comment sections under articles. Prause rarely used her real name or her own social media accounts. That all changed after UCLA chose not to renew Prause’s contract (around January, 2015).
Prause began to put her name to falsehoods, openly cyber-harassing multiple individuals and organizations on social media and elsewhere. Since Prause’s primary target was Gary Wilson (hundreds of social media comments along with behind the scenes email campaigns), it became necessary to monitor and document Prause’s tweets and posts. This was done for her victims’ protection, and crucial for any future legal actions, which resulted in this extensive page documenting he close relationships with many in the porn industry: Is Nicole Prause Influenced by the Porn Industry? Note: within months of that page going live, Prause became embroiled in two defamation lawsuits (Donald Hilton, MD & Nofap founder Alexander Rhodes), a trademark infringement case, and a trademark squatting case.
Exposing Prause claims of victim-hood as the “Big Lie”: She is the perpetrator, not the victim.
1) Gary Wilson “physically stalked” Prause in Los Angeles.
Reality: I haven’t been in Los Angeles in years. Prause provides no documentation for this claim, which she initiated in April, 2013 (see below), and began publicizing in July, 2013 (a few days after I critiqued her EEG study). The only police report made public by Prause (April, 2018) says nothing about me stalking her; it didn’t report any crime. Instead, Prause me reported to the LAPD for attending a German conference, which Prause falsely claimed she wanted to attend (screenshot). It’s true that I traveled to Germany and attended the 2018 5th International Conference on Behavioral Addictions, which ran from April 23-25 (note that Prause filed her police report on April 25th), and features experts on behavioral addictions from all over the world.
The untrue part is Prause’s claim that she ever had any intention of attending the ICBA conference in Germany. Prause has never attended or been invited to present at an ICBA conference. Prause doesn’t believe in behavioral addictions. Throughout her entire career, Prause has waged a war against the concept of behavioral addiction, especially sex and porn addiction. Prause thus filed a false police report.
Important to note that her false accusations of stalking began almost as soon as our paths crossed. In fact, she accused my wife and myself of stalking in an April, 2013 email exchange that occurred a few weeks after I published a response to David Ley’s Psychology Today blog post where Prause and he targeted my website: “Your Brain on Porn – It’s NOT Addictive.” Ley’s blog was about Nicole Prause’s unpublished, yet to be peer-reviewed EEG study (this was the first I had heard of Prause).
Prause initiated her only contact with me in 2 emails and a comment under my Psychology Today response. Simultaneously, she contacted Psychology Today editors, who forwarded her second email. The following 2 emails are from the end of our brief exchange (screenshots of Prause & Wilson’s entire email exchange):
As you can see, Prause is accusing us of stalking her, although all I did was respond to two emails she sent my way. This is where Prause’s fabricated “stalking” claims began.
Question: Did I drive 800 miles to Los Angeles on the same day I published my detailed critique to hover around UCLA, or did Prause initiate a fabricated campaign of being stalked on the day after my critique? Let’s go to trial and expose the truth.
2) Dr. Prause requires “armed guards at talks” because Gary Wilson has threatened to attend
3) Dr. Prause has filed numerous “police & FBI reports” on Gary Wilson
Reality: Starting in July, 2013 (a few days after I published a careful critique of Prause’s first EEG study), various usernames began posting defamatory comments wherever my name appeared. The comments were very similar in content and tone, falsely claiming that “Wilson has a police report filed on him,” “Wilson is charged with stalking a poor woman,” and “Wilson stole a woman’s pictures and placed them on a porn site,” and “Wilson has been reported to LAPD (which agrees that he’s dangerous) and the UCLA campus police.”
By 2016, as Prause was no longer employed by UCLA or any other institution that could rein in her cyber-harassment, she finally began to identify Gary Wilson as the “person” she had reported to the LAPD and the UCLA campus police. I haven’t been to LA in years. It’s almost 2020, and no law enforcement agency has ever contacted me. (Any harasser can file a fake police report, or misuse the courts)
I presumed that Prause had, in fact, filed fraudulent, groundless reports (which were subsequently disregarded), but it turned out Prause was lying – again. In late 2017 a call to the Los Angeles Police Department and the UCLA campus police revealed no report in their systems on a “Gary Wilson,” nor any report filed by a “Nicole Prause.” I created this section to report my findings: Los Angeles Police Department and UCLA campus police confirm that Prause lied about filing police reports on Gary Wilson.
As chronicled above, I discovered in March of 2019 that Prause had finally filed a fraudulent police report on April 25, 2018. Note that I did not learn of this empty police report from the police. I learned of it a year later, when student journalists (and misinformed Prause devotees) publicly reproduced it online in a university newspaper. It has since been removed by University of Wisconsin authorities.
Prause’s LAPD report was categorized as “cyberstalking”, not physical stalking (I’ve done neither). She didn’t (dare) report any actual crime. Instead, Prause had reported me to the LAPD for:
attending a German conference, which Prause falsely claimed she wanted to attend (but didn’t dare because she claimed to be frightened of me). Important to note that Prause could not have known that I was planning to attend (and she filed her police report the day after the conference was over).
If I have been physically stalking her, why doesn’t any police report describe me as doing so? It’s simple: Prause is afraid of being arrested for knowingly filing a police report falsely accusing me of an actual crime.
In 2019, Diana Davison became the first journalist to do an investigation into Prause’s claims of victim-hood. During their week of communications Prause was unable to provide any evidence other than Prause’s silly LAPD of me attending a German conference Prause lied about wanting to attend. Davison’s expose’ is here: The Post Millennial expose’ on Nicole Prause. Diana Davison also produced this 6-minute video about Prause’s fake victim-hood and the defamation lawsuits filed against Prause.
The Diana Davison video provided a link to the timeline of events chronicling Prause’s nearly 7-year campaign of harassment, defamation, threats, and false accusations: VSS Academic War Timeline (Prause got the timeline removed.)
Below are very revealing comments under the Diana Davison video (in response to an obsessive commenter and Prause fan):
Reality: No such order exists. Prause is trying to trick the public into believing that a court has formally sanctioned me, i.e., that she has obtained a restraining order or an injunction. She hasn’t. But that doesn’t stop her from publicly and falsely accusing me and other victims of her malice of “violating no contact orders” and of “harassment.” The clear, and clearly false, implication of her statements is to suggest I and others are acting illegally. Her aggressive tactics and knowingly false accusations are calculated to bully and intimidate the victims of her online cyber-harassment into fear and silence. Two defamation suits have been filed against her. Enough said.
I have only responded to a handful of Prause’s defamatory online attacks, ignoring countless “contacts” from her. For example, in a single 24-hr period Prause posted 10 Quora comments about me – which resulted in her permanent suspension. In another example Prause (using RealYBOP Twitter) posted over 120 tweets about me in a 4-day period (PDF of tweets). A few examples of Prause initiating harassment and defamation followed by claiming victim-hood and ending with claims about her fictitious “no-contact orders”:
5) Gary Wilson has employed misogynistic language to denigrate Dr. Prause
Reality: Absolutely false. Prause and Ley provide only a solitary non-example. I accidentally typed “Miss” Prause in a reply to Dr. Prause asking about the size of my penis. That’s the extent of her evidence of my supposed misogyny. Not kidding.
Link to my full answer. Portion of my comment where I used “Miss” Prause:
Prause is certainly being sexist when she demands details about the size of my penis. Nevertheless, she has transformed my inadvertently typing “Miss” in my reply to her questions about my manhood into part of her never ending baseless campaign to paint me and others as misogynists. In this section are just a few examples of how Prause has weaponized her bizarre interest in my penis size and my response.
Over the last few years, Dr. Prause appears to have taken great pains to position herself as a “woman being subjected to misogynistic oppression when she tells truth to power.” She frequently tweets the following infographic that she apparently also shares at her public lectures, suggesting she is being victimized “as a woman scientist,” and painting herself as a trailblazer forging ahead to prove porn’s harmlessness despite prejudiced attacks.
It accuses me, my wife, Don Hilton MD, and nofap founder Alexander Rhodes of misogyny with utterly unconvincing “evidence.” Any suggestion that I (or my wife), Hilton, or Rhodes are motivated by misogyny is fabricated, as our objections have nothing to do with Dr. Prause as a person or as a woman, and only to do with her untrue statements and inadequately supported claims about her research.
As for the Infographic, as explained above, Prause’s only evidence of misogyny is that I accidentally once wrote “Miss Prause” in response to her childish question about my penis size. Her assertion that my wife is a misogynist is laughable. Her claim that Don Hilton MD called her a “child molester” is yet another lie, as this section fully explains.
Put simply, anyone who exposes Prause’s falsehoods or misrepresentations of the research is automatically labeled “a misogynist,” in hopes that gullible people might believe her defamatory statements. She does this to shut down actual debate on Twitter and other social media platforms, to prevent her falsehoods from being exposed.
It’s ironic that her info-graphic contains four instances of misogyny taken from anonymous YouTube comments under her TEDx talk. In 2013, TED closed comments under Gary Wilson’s TEDx talk in response to Nicole Prause’s many hateful and defamatory comments (see this section).
I look forward to the two defamation lawsuits (Donald Hilton, MD & Nofap founder Alexander Rhodes) going to a jury trial, and to being on the stand to present evidence. I especially look forward to Prause and Ley being forced to provide actual evidence or documentation, rather than the few pieces self-generated bogus “evidence”. I look forward to their cross examination and the two harassers being exposed as the perpetrators, not the victims.
Now that SCRAM media has retracted the hit-piece, has published an apology, and has been forced to pay Alex Rhodes considerable monetary damages, Prause and Ley have gone silent. Not a peep from the serial defamers and harassers.
Below we provide:
Press release by Rhodes UK law firm
The apology to Alex Rhodes by Scram Media
Details concerning the articles defamation
Nicole Prause threatening CEO of DonorBox (Charles Zhang) with a small claims lawsuit for revealing her lies, behind the scenes harassment, and malicious reporting
Scram Media Limited and two of its contributors have apologised and agreed to pay defamation damages to US-based NoFap LLC and its founder Alexander Rhodes after publishing an article on ScramNews.com titled “Academic receives “death threats” from far-right after crowdfunding campaign to sue her.”
NoFap runs an online pornography recovery platform that enables users to connect with a supportive community of individuals determined to reduce or eliminate pornography use and free themselves from compulsive sexual behaviours. It receives millions of visitors every month and has been covered by a wide variety of outlets, including CNN, The New York Times, BBC, Business Insider, Time Magazine, MTV, The Washington Post, and Showtime.
The Scram News article contained numerous false and defamatory statements concerning NoFap and Mr Rhodes. In particular, the article wrongly suggested that NoFap and Mr Rhodes were affiliated with extremists (including anti-Semites); that they had brought a frivolous and vexatious defamation claim in the US Federal Court in order to stymie legitimate academic research; that they had incited extremists to harass and threaten the defendant in those proceedings; that a crowdfunding campaign for the litigation had resulted in a defendant being stalked and their address being posted online; and that they had published misleading information about the case by wrongly suggesting that the defendants have ties to the pornography industry in order to secure funding.
Scram has now published a full retraction and apology which can be found here. This acknowledges that the publication was wholly misleading of the work undertaken by NoFap and Mr Rhodes, of the defamation claim brought by Mr Rhodes and the crowdfunding campaign, and that neither Mr Rhodes or NoFap have incited members of such extremist hate groups to harass or threaten the defendant. Mr Rhodes’ defamation claim does not concern the defendants’ research, but rather alleged defamatory attacks on Mr Rhodes and NoFap. The legal Complaint in that claim can be found here.
Scram Media Limited has agreed to pay Mr Rhodes substantial damages and his legal costs. It has undertaken not to republish similar false allegations.
Unlike many initiatives that have traditionally raised concerns about pornography, NoFap LLC prides itself on being secular, apolitical, sex-positive, and science-based. It is used by men and women from all over the world, from a wide variety of backgrounds, religious and spiritual beliefs (or non-belief), sexual orientations and identities, ages, nationalities, ethnicities, and other characteristics.
Commenting on the settlement, Mr Rhodes said:-
“Our success in raising awareness about pornography addiction has resulted in us being the subject of a prolonged smear campaign orchestrated by elements who have close ties with the pornography industry, who have sought to falsely portray us as being affiliated to religious groups, hate groups, and extremists in an attempt to discredit us. Our website unites people from all walks of life to overcome porn addiction together. These elements appear to want to falsely controversialize the issue and misrepresent us to distract people from our actual views, the facts, and the emerging body of scientific research. Despite their ongoing defamation and disinformation campaign, we will continue to provide resources for recovering porn addicts.”
On 20 January 2020 we published an article on scramnews.com entitled “Academic receives “death threats” from far-right after crowdfunding campaign to sue her.”The article contained numerous false and defamatory statements concerning NoFap LLC (‘NoFap’) and its founder Alexander Rhodes. In particular, the article wrongly suggested that NoFap and Mr Rhodes were affiliated with extremists (including anti-Semites); that they had brought a frivolous and vexatious defamation claim in order to stymie legitimate academic research; that they had incited extremists to harass and threaten the defendant in those proceedings (a Dr Nicole Prause); and that they had published misleading information about the campaign in order to secure crowdfunding.
We wish to unequivocally retract the allegations contained within the article and apologise for the damage and distress caused to NoFap and Mr Rhodes by the publication.
We acknowledge that what we published was wholly misleading and an inaccurate representation, both of the work undertaken by NoFap and Mr Rhodes, and of the defamation claim brought by Mr Rhodes against Dr Prause., and that neither Mr. Rhodes or NoFap have incited members of extremist hate groups to harass or threaten Dr Prause.
Mr Rhodes’ defamation claim against Dr Prause does not concern her research, but rather alleged defamatory attacks on Mr Rhodes and NoFap. The formal copy of the legal Complaint in that claim (issued in the US Federal Court) can be found here. We acknowledge that there was, and is, nothing misleading about the crowdfunding campaign associated with this litigation.
NoFap is a pornography recovery online platform which enables users to connect with a supportive community of individuals determined to reduce or eliminate pornography use and free themselves from compulsive sexual behaviours. Unlike many initiatives that have traditionally criticised pornography, Mr Rhodes’ website prides itself on being secular, apolitical, sex-positive, and science-based. We understand that it is used by men and women from all over the world, from a wide variety of backgrounds, religious and spiritual beliefs (or non-belief), sexual orientations and identities, ages, nationalities, ethnicities, and other characteristics.
We wish to apologise to Mr Rhodes, NoFap and our readers. and we have agreed to pay substantial damages to NoFap and Mr Rhodes together with legal costs in respect of the damage/distress caused by the article.
Scram Media Limited Sam Bright Kate Plummer
January 2020: Prause incites defamatory UK article in an effort to have Alex Rhodes’s “Donor Box” fundraising campaign removed
David Ley and RealYBOP team up to spread the factually-inaccurate hit-piece, with RealYBOP tagging DonorBox and its CEO (unconcerned about adding to Rhodes’s concurrent defamation suit against her):
In a legally perilous move RealYBOP retweets the defamatory SCRAM article:
Prause persuaded the outlet to print the falsehood that she had received death threats from members of the far-right after Rhodes’s crowdfunding campaign began. Hilariously, Prause began posting tweets making this phony claim 22 minutes before the campaign itself commenced. Its commencement was slightly delayed, and she impulsively jumped in based on the projected start time Rhodes had announced online.
So it was that Prause claimed the first death threats at 7:50 am, and yet another death threat a few minutes later (all before NoFap commenced its crowdfund):
Notice that Prause never provides screenshots of her claimed death threats. (She’s a serial fabricator.)
The SCRAM article contained other blatant, defamatory misinformation supplied by Prause as well. For example, it claimed Rhodes sued her because her “research was tantamount to defamation.” That’s absurd. Rhodes sued her because of her ongoing campaign of defamation and harassment of him and NoFap. None of his claims challenge her research (although many peer-reviewed papers have implied that she misinterpreted the significance of her research, and that her findings are consistent with the presence of addiction among her subjects).
She also claimed Rhodes engaged in “misogyny” and that Rhodes’s fans have tried to hack her Facebook and email, all with no support whatsoever. The SCRAM article stated that she “believes she is being stalked and that her [home] address has been posted online.”
The latter is especially difficult to take seriously, as she has publicly stated that she never posts her home address online. Prause herself has posted various fake addresses online, including an address she used for the malicious trademark application she filed in an illicit effort to grab the URL for this website! These addresses can readily be found. Save yourself a stamp, however, as any correspondence will be returned as undeliverable (as was YBOP’s attorney’s cease & desist letter for Prause’s trademark infringement).
SCRAM quotes Prause’s dismissive remarks about Rhodes’s suit, but did not ask Rhodes for his side of the story. Finally, SCRAM made the very dubious argument that because Prause claims she has no ties to the porn industry (despite images and other extensive evidence to the contrary), Rhodes’s Donor Box campaign to fund his lawsuit against Prause was fraudulent. Really?
On top of this blatant misuse of their journalistic pen, the SCRAM team deleted comments under the article when readers attempted to counter Prause’s/SCRAM’s untruthful and misleading statements with actual evidence.
So much for responsible journalism.
Shortly after the publication of the now deleted SCRAM article, and RealYBOP tweeting it, Alex Rhodes filed his amended complaint against Nicole Prause. In his new complaint the ScramNews article was added as a new incident of defamation:
March 3, 2020: Even though her RealYBOP Twitter account is now named in the Rhodes’s defamation suit, Prause trolled “The Doctors” to tweet Scram’s defamatory hit-piece under a picture of Alex Rhodes.
Once again, she thus revealed she was the perpetrator, not the victim.
On March 23, 2020 Alex Rhodes filed his opposition to Prause’s motion to dismiss. PDF’s of the 3 court filings:
Rhodes’s new filings contain more about Prause’s hand in the ScramNews hit-piece, including Rhodes hiring a UK law firm to sue ScramNews, and the 2 authors, for defamation.
Nicole Prause threatens CEO of DonorBox (Charles Zhang) with a small claims lawsuit for revealing her lies and behind the scenes harassment
As Zhang revealed in the following threads, Prause relentlessly harassed DonorBox with numerators emails containing lies and threats. She even filed a bogus report to the BBB. All in a failed attempt to take down Rhodes’s crowdfunding.
Charles Zhang May 24 thread starts by exposing the lies published by Scram:
This lawsuit was crazy because Alex is nowhere near right-wing much less far-right. He might even be on the left politically. @scramnews and @NicoleRPrause labeled him as aligned with anti-semitic, white supremacists.
.@scramnews deleted all their extortion petitions against Donorbox. Why? We didn’t sue them. I see they are trying to destroy evidence LOL. Of course we have loads of screenshots.
Prause then threatens Zhang. He tweets about it the next day:
After I included Nicole Prause on a total of TWO short, matter of transpirace tweets (vs 10+ emails she wrote to our company), she demands $10k and accused me of stalking her. (she didn’t block me prior). This is a pattern. She accuses ppl of stalking when we wanna stay far away. pic.twitter.com/rcdXbpXlta
The threats lead to Zhang creating a separate thread, where he tags YBOP:
Rhode vs Prause is a prime example of political tribalism as a weapon. 1. Rhodes who is a leftie creates a site to help with porn addiction. 2. Some right-wing users happen to like it. 3. Prause who is pro-porn makes it into a far-right issue. https://t.co/KINtHAL4P6
Hey I feel for you! I got the same demand, 10K, then she filed a bogus small claims suit against me in CA (I don't live or work there). My details here: https://t.co/8kpyuKbAts
Update (August, 2020): Serial defamer & harasser Nicole Pause loses lawsuits to Gary Wilson; court rulings expose Prause the perpetrator, not the victim.
In August of 2020 court rulings fully exposed Nicole Prause as the perpetrator, not the victim. In March of 2020, Prause sought a groundless temporary restraining order (TRO) against me using fabricated “evidence” and her usual lies (falsely accusing me of stalking). In Prause’s request for the restraining order she perjured herself, saying I posted her address on YBOP and Twitter (perjury is nothing new with Prause). I filed an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against Prause for misusing the legal system (TRO) to silence and harass me. On August 6, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled that Prause’s attempt to obtain a restraining order against me constituted a frivolous and illegal “strategic lawsuit against public participation” (commonly called a “SLAPP suit”). Prause lied throughout her fraudulent TRO, providing zero verifiable evidence to support her outlandish claims that I stalked or harassed her. In essence, the Court found that Prause abused the restraining order process to bully me into silence and undercut his rights to free speech. By law, the SLAPP ruling obligates Prause to pay my attorney fees.
On September 13, 2019 Prause filed 2 documents as part of a failed attempt to have Hilton’s defamation lawsuit dismissed. (She had previously filed numerous documents to dismiss Hilton’s case. These were “extras,” filed without the Court’s leave.)
A 12-page motion to dismiss focused only on a statute that does not apply in Federal Court (where she had had the case transferred) called SLAPP. This motion does not mention me (why would it?).
An 86-page tirade focused largely on Gary Wilson, and not at all on her actual Motion to Dismiss argument (SLAPP).
The 86-page collection of falsehoods and fairy tales contains 220 instances of “Wilson,” far more than the number of times Plaintiff Hilton’s name appears (the suit is between Hilton and Prause)! That’s right. The Hilton lawsuit has nothing to with me. Whether Gary Wilson is a saint or a serial killer has no bearing on Prause making false allegations to the Texas Medical Board, two journals, and the University of Texas San Antonio. The clear purpose of Prause’s irrelevant and defamatory 86-page rant is to create a document that may help to “legitimize” her victim-hood to the court, the public and the media.
Prause’s 86-page rant contains numerous lies by both David Ley and Prause. Both commit perjury throughout this declaration, spewing the same disproven lies that they have initiated and spread over the last 7 years. Nearly every assertion about me in the 86-page document has already been addressed and exposed as false or hopelessly misleading. See these extensive pages:
As documented, Prause has targeted others, including researchers, medical doctors, therapists, psychologists, colleagues from her fleeting stint at UCLA, a UK charity, men in recovery, a TIME magazine editor, several professors, IITAP, SASH, Fight The New Drug, Exodus Cry, the academic journal Behavioral Sciences, its parent company MDPI, US Navy medical doctors, the head of the academic journal CUREUS, and the journal Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity. There are several additional victims whom we are not at liberty to divulge – as Prause’s victims fear further retribution.
Important point: While Prause continues to falsely claim she is “the victim,” it is Prause who initiated all contact and harassment towards the individuals and organizations listed on the above pages. Her fabricated claims about being a victim of “stalking” or misogyny from “anti-porn activists” lack one iota of objective evidence. All the evidence she provides is self-generated: a single info-graphic, a few emails from her to others describing supposed harassment, and spurious cease and desist letters containing false allegations. You will also see evidence of a number of formal complaints Prause has filed with various regulatory agencies – which have been summarily dismissed or investigated and dismissed. She seems to file these baseless complaints so she can then claim her targets are all “under investigation.”
Conflicts of interest (COI) are nothing new for David Ley. Lawyers pay him to “debunk” sex and porn addiction; he sells two books “debunking” sex and porn addiction; and he collects speaking fees for “debunking” sex and porn addiction. In his most blatant financial conflict of interest to date, Ley is being compensated by porn industry giant xHamster to promote its website (i.e. StripChat), and to convince users that porn addiction and sex addiction are myths. Ley claims to be telling xHamster customers what “medical studies truly say about porn, camming and sexuality.” Spreading the love around, Pornhub (owned by porn giant MindGeek) is one of the five back-cover endorsements listed for Ley’s 2016 book about porn “Ethical Porn for Dicks.”
In summary, Prause and Ley are very tight with the porn industry and have plenty of motivation to defame and harass anyone pointing out the possible harms of internet porn (and to commit perjury?). For much more documentation see: Is Nicole Prause Influenced by the Porn Industry?
Prause’s fabrications of victim-hood exposed as groundless: she is the perpetrator, not the victim
Prause’s 86-page rant contains virtually no evidence for any of her assertions. Mostly it’s just Prause and Ley declaring “truths,” while providing zero supporting evidence. The rare instances of “evidence” usually involve irrelevant screenshots or self-generated materials (like her false 2018 police report, which was ignored by the LAPD). Since many of the Prause and Ley assertions revolve around their mythology of being victimized by “anti-porn activists,” I debunk their fabrications below (and supply additional evidence under each specific claim):
1) Gary Wilson “physically stalked” Prause in Los Angeles.
Reality: I haven’t been in Los Angeles in years. Prause provides no documentation for this claim, which she initiated in April, 2013 (see below), and began publicizing in July, 2013 (a few days after I critiqued her EEG study). The only police report made public by Prause (April, 2018) says nothing about me stalking her; it didn’t report any crime. Instead, Prause me reported to the LAPD for attending a German conference, which Prause falsely claimed she wanted to attend (screenshot). It’s true that I traveled to Germany and attended the 2018 5th International Conference on Behavioral Addictions, which ran from April 23-25 (note that Prause filed her police report on April 25th), and features experts on behavioral addictions from all over the world. The untrue part is Prause’s claim that she ever had any intention of attending the ICBA conference in Germany. Prause has never attended or been invited to present at an ICBA conference. Prause doesn’t believe in behavioral addictions. Throughout her entire career, Prause has waged a war against the concept of behavioral addiction, especially sex and porn addiction. Prause thus filed a false police report.
Important to note that her false accusations of stalking began almost as soon as our paths crossed. In fact, she accused my wife and myself of stalking in an April, 2013 email exchange that occurred a few weeks after I published a response to David Ley’s Psychology Today blog post where Prause and he targeted my website: “Your Brain on Porn – It’s NOT Addictive.” Ley’s blog was about Nicole Prause’s unpublished, yet to be peer-reviewed EEG study (this was the first I had heard of Prause).
Prause initiated her only contact with me in 2 emails and a comment under my Psychology Today response. Simultaneously, she contacted Psychology Today editors, who forwarded her second email. The following 2 emails are from the end of our brief exchange (screenshots of Prause & Wilson’s entire email exchange):
As you can see, Prause is accusing us of stalking her, although all I did was respond to two emails she sent my way. This is where Prause’s fabricated “stalking” claims began.
Question: Did I drive 800 miles to Los Angeles on the same day I published my detailed critique to hover around UCLA, or did Prause initiate a fabricated campaign of being stalked on the day after my critique? Let’s go to trial and expose the truth.
2) Dr. Prause requires “armed guards at talks” because Gary Wilson has threatened to attend
3) Dr. Prause has filed numerous “police & FBI reports” on Gary Wilson
Reality: Starting in July, 2013 (a few days after I published a careful critique of Prause’s first EEG study), various usernames began posting defamatory comments wherever my name appeared. The comments were very similar in content and tone, falsely claiming that “Wilson has a police report filed on him,” “Wilson is charged with stalking a poor woman,” and “Wilson stole a woman’s pictures and placed them on a porn site,” and “Wilson has been reported to LAPD (which agrees that he’s dangerous) and the UCLA campus police.”
By 2016, as Prause was no longer employed by UCLA or any other institution that could rein in her cyber-harassment, she finally began to identify Gary Wilson as the “person” she had reported to the LAPD and the UCLA campus police. I haven’t been to LA in years. It’s almost 2020, and no law enforcement agency has ever contacted me. (Any harasser can file a fake police report.)
I presumed that Prause had, in fact, filed fraudulent, groundless reports (which were subsequently disregarded), but it turned out Prause was lying – again. In late 2017 a call to the Los Angeles Police Department and the UCLA campus police revealed no report in their systems on a “Gary Wilson,” nor any report filed by a “Nicole Prause.” I created this section to report my findings: Los Angeles Police Department and UCLA campus police confirm that Prause lied about filing police reports on Gary Wilson.
As chronicled above, I discovered in March of 2019 that Prause had finally filed a fraudulent police report on April 25, 2018. Note that I did not learn of this empty police report from the police. I learned of it a year later, when student journalists (and misinformed Prause devotees) publicly reproduced it online in a university newspaper. It has since been removed by University of Wisconsin authorities.
Prause’s LAPD report was categorized as “cyberstalking”, not physical stalking (I’ve done neither). She didn’t (dare) report any actual crime. Instead, Prause had reported me to the LAPD for:
attending a German conference, which Prause falsely claimed she wanted to attend (but didn’t dare because she claimed to be frightened of me). Important to note that Prause could not have known that I was planning to attend (and she filed her police report the day after the conference was over).
If I have been physically stalking her, why doesn’t any police report describe me as doing so? It’s simple: Prause is afraid of being arrested for knowingly filing a police report falsely accusing me of an actual crime.
In 2019, Diana Davison became the first journalist to do an investigation into Prause’s claims of victim-hood. During their week of communications Prause was unable to provide any evidence other than Prause’s silly LAPD of me attending a German conference Prause lied about wanting to attend. Davison’s expose’ is here: The Post Millennial expose’ on Nicole Prause. Diana Davison also produced this 6-minute video about Prause’s fake victim-hood and the defamation lawsuits filed against Prause.
Reality: No such order exists. Prause is trying to trick the public into believing that a court has formally sanctioned me, i.e., that she has obtained a restraining order or an injunction. She hasn’t. But that doesn’t stop her from publicly and falsely accusing me and other victims of her malice of “violating no contact orders” and of “harassment.” The clear, and clearly false, implication of her statements is to suggest I and others are acting illegally. Her aggressive tactics and knowingly false accusations are calculated to bully and intimidate the victims of her online cyber-harassment into fear and silence. Two defamation suits have been filed against her. Enough said.
I have only responded to a handful of Prause’s defamatory online attacks, ignoring countless “contacts” from her. For example, in a single 24-hr period Prause posted 10 Quora comments about me – which resulted in her permanent suspension. In another example Prause (using RealYBOP Twitter) posted over 120 tweets about me in a 4-day period (PDF of tweets). A few examples of Prause initiating harassment and defamation followed by claiming victim-hood and ending with claims about her fictitious “no-contact orders”:
5) Gary Wilson has employed misogynistic language to denigrate Dr. Prause
Reality: Absolutely false. Prause and Ley provide only a solitary non-example. I accidentally typed “Miss” Prause in a reply to Dr. Prause asking about the size of my penis. That’s the extent of her evidence of my supposed misogyny. Not kidding.
Link to my full answer. Portion of my comment where I used “Miss” Prause:
Prause is certainly being sexist when she demands details about the size of my penis. Nevertheless, she has transformed my inadvertently typing “Miss” in my reply to her questions about my manhood into part of her never ending baseless campaign to paint me and others as misogynists. In this section are just a few examples of how Prause has weaponized her bizarre interest in my penis size and my response.
Over the last few years, Dr. Prause appears to have taken great pains to position herself as a “woman being subjected to misogynistic oppression when she tells truth to power.” She frequently tweets the following infographic that she apparently also shares at her public lectures, suggesting she is being victimized “as a woman scientist,” and painting herself as a trailblazer forging ahead to prove porn’s harmlessness despite prejudiced attacks.
It accuses me, my wife, Don Hilton MD, and nofap founder Alexander Rhodes of misogyny with utterly unconvincing “evidence.” Any suggestion that I (or my wife), Hilton, or Rhodes are motivated by misogyny is fabricated, as our objections have nothing to do with Dr. Prause as a person or as a woman, and only to do with her untrue statements and inadequately supported claims about her research.
Put simply, anyone who exposes Prause’s falsehoods or misrepresentations of the research is automatically labeled “a misogynist,” in hopes that gullible people might believe her defamatory statements. She does this to shut down actual debate on Twitter and other social media platforms, to prevent her falsehoods from being exposed.
It’s ironic that her info-graphic contains four instances of misogyny taken from anonymous YouTube comments under her TEDx talk. In 2013, TED closed comments under Gary Wilson’s TEDx talk in response to Nicole Prause’s many hateful and defamatory comments (see this section).
Prause & Ley’s 86-page diatribe (filed in Dr. Hilton’s defamation suit against Dr. Prause) includes claims of misogyny, yet fails to provide a single documented instance of misogyny by Don Hilton or any of the 9 people who filed sworn affidavits.
I look forward to the Hilton defamation lawsuit going to a jury trial, and to being on the stand to present evidence. I especially look forward to Prause and Ley being forced to provide actual evidence or documentation, rather than the few pieces self-generated “evidence” found her 86-page defamatory rant. I look forward to their cross examination.
Below are excerpts from the 86-page diatribe that refer to me (in maroon). For each Prause or Ley assertion I point out their lies (perjury), expose their so-called evidence (or lack thereof), and provide the truth.
PRAUSE: “Hilton and Stalker Gary Wilson insisting to reporter Prause attended porn awards she did not attend”
Context: It’s important to know that much of Prause’s “justification” for defaming Don Hilton arises from Hilton stating that Prause attended porn-industry awards (which Prause denies). Because Prause and Ley chronically cite Hilton’s religious faith as disqualifying him from commenting on science, Hilton (the author of multiple peer-reviewed papers) felt it was necessary to point out their biases (in hopes of refocusing the debate on the research evidence). While thousands of social media postings substantiate Prause’s pro-porn biases, Hilton chose a time-saving route in his presentations: tweets of Prause attending porn industry awards or indicating she had or would attend in the future (the screenshots were obtained from this page: Evidence that Nicole Prause attends porn industry awards (XRCO, AVN)).
Chad Sokol and my email: This brings us to reporter Chad Sokol and his biased article about a February 23, 2019 conference on the harms of porn held at Gonzaga University. In his interviews with some of the presenters (such as Don Hilton) it became apparent that Sokol had already spoken with David Ley and Nicole Prause (and Prause co-author Cameron Staley). Sokol was clearly on the side of the latter and had been prepared with Prause-generated materials and talking points.
In conversations with Hilton, Sokol parroted Prause, suggesting that Hilton’s religious faith skewed his views, making him biased. If bias (not the research) was Sokol’s primary concern, Hilton wondered if Sokol might be willing to examine evidence of Prause and Ley’s biases. This resulted in Sokol receiving evidence of Prause’s pro-porn biases: this page – Is Nicole Prause Influenced by the Porn Industry? – and this email from me to Don Hilton (which was forwarded to Sokol, who forwarded it to Prause): Email from Gary Wilson to Donald Hilton, which was forwarded to reporter Chad Sokol (2/21/2019). The screenshots in my email reveal that Prause:
Prause’s false account from her Motion to Dismiss:
PRAUSE: In February 2019, I received calls and emails from Chad Sokol, a reporter with the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, WA, asking me to comment on statements that Dr. Hilton had made to Sokol for a potential news article in this publication. According to Sokol, Dr. Hilton had stated that I had attended the Adult Video News Awards. Sokol also forwarded a photograph, which he stated Dr. Hilton proved I was at the Adult Industry News awards. I informed Sokol that I have never attended the Adult Video Awards. I informed Mr. Sokol that the photograph was actually taken at the premier of the documentary film “After Porn Ends 2”
Actually, it was not an AVN award ceremony, but rather an X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) award ceremony. Prause lied when she stated that the following photograph was “actually taken at the premier of the documentary film After Porn Ends 2.“ It is a screenshot of the June 22, 2016 tweet: X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) awards ceremony (notice XRCO on the backdrop):
Watch this 20-minute video of the 2016 XRCO awards (pretty racy). Prause can be seen around the 6:10 mark sitting at a table with porn star buddy Melissa Hill.
If there’s any doubt, this page on XBIZ announced the 2016 XRCO Awards Winners. There was no category for documentaries, nor for any non-porn film. Put simply, “After Porn Ends 2” would not have been up for any award even it had been released. It had not. “After Porn Ends 2” wasn’t released until nearly a year later on March 28, 2017. Check out AVN’s coverage of the “After Porn Ends 2” screening on March 23, 2017. Prause is also featured in a few photos, none of which were sent to Chad Sokol (and weren’t on YBOP at the time of the Chad Sokol email):
Prause perjured herself.
What about Prause’s claim that she never attended AVN? In a June, 2015 tweet Prause describes hearing Jeanne Silver’s (a porn star) story “at AVN” (we could assume the Adult Video News Awards):
Is Prause lying in the above tweet or lying in her affidavit?
One of the porn stars (Avalon) is from Australia. She tells Prause that it’s too expensive to ship a t-shirt to her. Prause asks Avalon if she would like to pick up her t-shirt at “the AVN.” The only logical conclusion is that Prause will be attending AVN awards, the AVN EXPO, or both.
Avalon tells Prause to have an amazing time at the AVN.
Prause is caught in yet another falsehood. Cross-examination on this one should be illuminating.
Even though Hilton’s contention is that Prause attended porn-industry awards (XRCO), or tweeted she had attended (2015 AVN), or might attend (2019 AVN), Prause has now enlisted porn-industry allies to debunk her straw man/false claim that Hilton said she is financially supported by the porn industry (he never said that). On November, 24, 2019 she tweeted the following:
It’s fascinating that major players in the porn industry are at her beck and call. Yet, what does this have to do with Hilton’s lawsuit or his statements that Prause attended the 2016 XRCO awards? Nothing. Nevertheless, Prause obtained a rather humorous email from Bob and XRCO. Prause’s tweet (from a string of unhinged tweets threatening The Post Millennial):
Oops. Bob said Prause attended the 2016 XRCO awards (the photo sent to Chad Sokol). Prause caught herself committing perjury.
In the same thread where she lobbed threats, Prause tweeted an email from the folks at AVN:
How does the AVN email “prove” Prause never attended AVN? It says “I have no record of who may have purchased tickets to either show.”
So AVN has “no record of who purchased tickets,” and we have Prause tweeting that she heard Jeanne’s story at AVN. Does this remind you of a dog chasing its tail?
PRAUSE:15. When I became aware of Hilton’s communications with journalist Chad Sokol, I learned that Hilton was working with Gary Wilson. Although Hilton claims he does not follow me on social media, it appears that Hilton obtained the photographs that from Gary Wilson. A reverse Google image search shows the exact images provided in this lawsuit were provided by Gary Wilson from his website yourbrainonporn.com. In his statement, Hilton admits that he obtained my old tweets from Wilson. Wilson also posts extensive false claims that I am in pornography. For example, Wilson falsely claims, that I write for a pornographic website hosted by Mike South, whom I actually do not know. See South Email Correspondence, attached hereto as Exhibit 1(L).
Prause simply lies when she asserts that Gary Wilson said she works in porn or has appeared in porn.
PRAUSE: “Wilson also posts extensive false claims that I am in pornography.”
No evidence provided by Prause. Exhibit L is a two-sentence irrelevant email from Chad Sokol.
In fact, all four assertions in the following 2015 C&D letter are false (Prause provided no documentation to support these claims):
I wrote the following letter asking both Prause and her lawyer to provide evidence to support their allegations:
In the intervening 4+ years neither Prause nor the lawyer has responded. Neither has provided any evidence to support Prause’s allegations – because the allegations are fabricated. Prause’s legal filings repeat this false claim, yet provide zero examples of Hilton or me saying she works “in porn.” As for what I actually say about Prause’s very cozy relationship with the porn industry, see Is Nicole Prause Influenced by the Porn Industry? The page has a section addressing this particular lie: Falsely accusing others of saying the porn industry funds some of her research. Moreover, YBOP explicitly states the following:
Again, no one has claimed Prause receives direct funding from the FSC or the “porn industry.” In fact, it seems most unlikely that the FSC would make any such arrangements directly, let alone make them public, even if they existed. Nor has anyone stated that Prause is “in the porn industry” or “has, herself, appeared in pornography,” as she falsely asserted in her bogus cease and desist letters, and in her response to Don Hilton, MD’s defamation lawsuit against her.
Second, here’s Prause assertion and related falsehoods/spin:
PRAUSE: “For example, Wilson falsely claims, that I write for a pornographic website hosted by Mike South, whom I actually do not know. See South Email Correspondence, attached hereto as Exhibit 1(L).”
Typical Prause: she is attempting to turn her cyber-stalking and defamation into victim-hood. I never said that Prause “[wrote] for a pornographic website.” I stated, factually, that Prause placed a defamatory article on Mike South’s website (March 5th, 2018). I stand by my claim. The entire story of Prause obtaining my redacted Southern Oregon University employment records, lying that I was fired, and placing my records (along with her lies) on Twitter, Quora and Mike South’s adult industry website is chronicled here: Nicole Prause & David Ley libelous claim that Gary Wilson was fired from Southern Oregon University.
Prause omits a few outcomes of her defamatory rampage:
Prause’s “evidence” is a solicited email from porn producer Mike South (it contains false information):
The first falsehood is Mike South claiming in July, 2019 that he has never heard of Prause. How can that be when he published her article and tweeted it in March of 2018?
Second falsehood (besides Prause lying about me stalking her) is Prause claiming on July 25, 2019 that I am suing her. I may do so, but I haven’t yet.
Highly unlikely: Prause (not South) claims that the Mike South article was a re-post of her libelous Quora post (the one that got her ultimately banned). She’s claiming that South magically bumped into her Quora post (yeah right). South’s article was posted soon after the Quora mods deleted my employment records and hide Prause’s defamatory post on March 5th.
In addition, the Quora post Mike South supposedly relied on was authored by “VOICE FOR REASON,” whose only Mike South post is the one about me. Moreover, the Mike South article begins with Prause-generated propaganda, not found in her Quora post.
Nicole Prause, Ph.D is an American neuroscientist researching human sexual behavior, addiction, and the physiology of sexual response, as well as a licensed psychologist. In 2013, Prause co-authored a renowned study into the neurophysiology of pornography addiction which concluded that hypersexuality might be better understood as a “non-pathological variation of high sexual desire,” rather than an addiction.
The outspoken Prause and her research have been targeted by Mormon-funded anti-porn groups.
Finally, we have David Ley crowing about (and Prause retweeting it) the Mike South article on social media (how could they both know about it, unless they collaborated with South):
I stand by my claim that Prause was involved in having her defamatory article and my redacted SOU employment records placed on Mike South’s website. In fact, Mike South promptly removed the defamatory article. Let’s see if South is willing to testify, under oath, at Hilton’s defamation trial.
PRAUSE:16. “By working with Wilson and claiming that I am involved in the pornography industry, Hilton knew or should have known that I have been forced to file multiple complaints against Gary Wilson for stalking, harassment, computer intrusion, and criminal threats since 2013. These reports to law enforcement were publicly available, as Gary Wilson posted them on his website www.yourbrainonporn.com, to which Hilton contributes. Although Wilson claims that these reports do not exist and were never filed, I have obtained the reports directly from the FBI. See Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Response for Records of Reports against Gary Wilson and Alexander Rhodes, attached hereto as Exhibit 1(M). Hilton and Wilson also have written and presented together in their anti-pornography activism. Hilton’s collaboration with Wilson, who has physically stalked, cyber stalked and harassed me in the past, caused me to fear that Hilton also intended to harass me further and was supporting Gary Wilson’s escalating behaviors.”
Only evidence provided – a picture of a CD. Not kidding.
Most of the above assertions and lies are addressed in the introduction section and the next section. Since Prause rehashes these very same falsehoods repeatedly throughout her court filing (below), I’ll provide a quick refutation for each:
PRAUSE: “By working with Wilson and claiming that I am involved in the pornography industry, Hilton knew or should have known that I have been forced to file multiple complaints against Gary Wilson for stalking, harassment, computer intrusion, and criminal threats since 2013.”
Prause provides no evidence to suggest that Hilton said she is “involved in the porn industry,” because Hilton has not said this. As for claiming to have filed “multiple complaints against Gary Wilson for stalking, harassment, computer intrusion, and criminal threats,” Prause provides no documentation, only a screen of a CD (huh?):
If Prause has actual police or FBI reports why doesn’t she produce them? Simple: she is either lying about having filed the reports or she is afraid that we will report her to authorities for filing false police reports.
Prause’s supposed reports were addressed in the intro and in the next section. As stated elsewhere, I have never been contacted by any law enforcement agency, and a call in late 2017 to the Los Angeles police and the UCLA campus police revealed no such report in their systems. An FOIA request with the FBI revealed that Prause lied about reporting me (PDF of FOIA request). As a result, I followed the FBI’s advice and reported her to the FBI in December, 2018 (PDF- FBI report on Prause).
PRAUSE: “These reports to law enforcement were publicly available, as Gary Wilson posted them on his website www.yourbrainonporn.com, to which Hilton contributes.”
No evidence provided by Prause. Reports to law enforcement are not publicly available.
Prause is lying, as her claimed police and FBI reports are not publicly available. Only the person who files a police report can obtain it. As chronicled above, I discovered in March of 2019 that Prause had finally filed a fraudulent police report on April 25, 2018 (because it appeared in a student newspaper and was removed in 2 days). Her bogus report didn’t (dare) report any actual crime. Instead, Prause had reported me to the LAPD for attending a German conference, which Prause falsely claimed she had wanted to attend (but didn’t dare because she was purportedly frightened of me). If indeed I have been physically stalking Prause, why isn’t there a police report describing me as doing so? Why didn’t Prause provide copies of the alleged reports in her 86-page diatribe? It’s simple: Prause is afraid of being arrested for knowingly filing a police report falsely accusing me of an actual crime.
As for Don Hilton contributing to www.yourbrainonporn.com, he does not. While YBOP contains a few papers or blog posts by Dr. Hilton, it contains many more articles by Dr. Prause. Does this mean Prause is a YBOP contributor? Hardly.
PRAUSE: “Although Wilson claims that these reports do not exist and were never filed, I have obtained the reports directly from the FBI. See Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Response for Records of Reports against Gary Wilson and Alexander Rhodes, attached hereto as Exhibit 1(M).”
All we have is a picture of a CD (above). Why won’t Prause provide the claimed reports?
PRAUSE: “Hilton and Wilson also have written and presented together in their anti-pornography activism. Hilton’s collaboration with Wilson, who has physically stalked, cyber stalked and harassed me in the past, caused me to fear that Hilton also intended to harass me further and was supporting Gary Wilson’s escalating behaviors.”
No evidence provided by Prause.
Prause’s legal “strategy” is to fabricate victim-hood, so as to avoid discussing the merits of Hilton’s defamation claims. What is true: Hilton and I collaborated with other experts in this field to respond to two Salt Lake Tribune op-eds.
After these comments Prause harassed, defamed and threatened Diana Davison (even sending Davison and The Post Millennial a bogus cease & desist letter). [PDF].
A few Diana Davison tweets in response to Prause’s unhinged and threatening tweets:
Why does Twitter allow people who have blocked you to reply to tweets? I've got some nutter (Nicole Prause) falsely accusing me (surprise, surprise) and other people have to tell me what's going on.
That she lied about attending the XRCO event and she's threatening to sue people who say they've seen a picture of her there. Also, falsely accusing people of stalking just for doing research and defending themselves.
So I've just been threatened with a bogus lawsuit for saying things that are provably true. Interesting. For the person issuing this threat: I have an LA lawyer and you'll be hearing from him if you persist in this attempt at silencing my speech.
To be honest, I kind of feel like I should have an affidavit of being bullied in the lawsuits now. Just got a notice that Prause had my timeline documentation removed from the website that allowed me to track her nefarious activities.
PRAUSE:17. Wilson has a documented history of stalking me. As a result, I qualified for California’s Safe at Home Program, and solicited a no-contact order against Wilson. Wilson has filed complaints with UCLA regarding me, which UCLA investigated and rejected as false. I have also filed a cyberstalking report with the FBI against Wilson. A chronology of these events is as follows:
No evidence provided by Prause. A garbage pile of fabricated fake victim-hood by the actual perpetrator, Prause.
Again, these are unsupported claims. As exposed in the introductory section (Prause’s fabrications of victim-hood), Prause provides zero evidence to support her stalking claims. As explained in that section:
Prause’s “no-contact order” is pure fiction: I have never initiated contact with Prause, yet Prause has contacted me hundreds of time on social media (more below).
Our complaint to UCLA was factually accurate and justified (much more on UCLA below). Reality? UCLA did not renew Prause’s contract (late 2014, early 2015). This coincided with Prause harassing and defaming UCLA colleague Rory Reid (Dr. Reid is still at UCLA).
I’m really looking forward to a jury trial, testifying under oath to Prause’s litany of falsehoods. Even more, I’m looking forward to Prause being cross-examined and exposed as the perpetrator, not the victim.
PRAUSE: A chronology of these events is as follows:
In each section below I expose Prause’s lies, fabrications, tall-tales and so-called “evidence” (usually no evidence). In doing so I provide documentation that reveals Prause as the harasser and stalker. While a few Prause’s claims may be technically accurate (she asked for security guards at a talk, or someone tried to break into her home), to my knowledge, they are nothing more than Prause fairy-tales of faux victim-hood.
PRAUSE: a.April 12, 2013. Following a barrage of emails from Gary Wilson, I instructed him to never contact me again. He has violated this no-contact order at least 50 times.
No evidence provided by Prause. No such order exist, and there was no email barrage. Prause is trying to trick the public into believing that a court has formally sanctioned me, i.e., that she has obtained a restraining order or an injunction. She hasn’t.
Fabricated “no-contact” orders? While claiming she has obtained a fictitious “no-contact order,” Prause has concurrently posted derogatory comments about me hundreds of times on Twitter, Facebook and Quora (page 1, page 2). In addition, Prause has employed over 100 aliases over the years to defame me and others. She has also employed alias email accounts to spread lies about me. Here I provide examples of aliases Prause has employed to harass, disparage, defame, troll (I am unable to link to the numerous other aliases, such as dozens on Psychology Today, and elsewhere):
Answer: Prause is not afraid because she is the perpetrator, not the victim. The defamation lawsuits will expose this, and so much more.
PRAUSE: b.July 3, 2013. Psychology Today editor Lybi Ma instructed Wilson and his wife Marnia Robinson to stop posting false information about me on their Psychology Today column. Wilson and Robinson posted another defamatory column, so Lybi Ma permanently cancelled their Psychology Today column due to their harassment and libel.
No evidence provided by Prause.
Reality: On March 6th, 2013 David Ley and Nicole Prause teamed up to write a Psychology Today blog post about Steele et al., 2013 called “Your Brain on Porn – It’s NOT Addictive.” Its oh-so-catchy title is misleading as it had nothing to do with Your Brain on Porn (my website). Prause and Ley were targeting me. Instead, David Ley’s March, 2013 blog post was about Nicole Prause’s unpublished, still to be peer-reviewed EEG study – Steele et al., 2013.
It’s important to note that only Ley received access to Prause’s unpublished study (it was published 5 months later). The blog post linked to Wilson’s ‘Your Brain on Porn’ website, and suggested that YBOP was in favor of banning porn (untrue). I published a Psychology Today blog post responding to the content in the David Ley post. You can find the original Ley and Wilson blog posts archived here. It’s important to note that my blog post clearly states it was only responding to Ley’s description of the Prause study. A month later (April 10th) Psychology Today editors unpublished Ley’s blog post due to controversies surrounding its unsubstantiated claims and Prause’s refusal to provided her unpublished study to anyone else.
The day Steele et al., 2013 and its extensive associated press went public, Ley re-published his blog post. Ley changed the date of his blog post to July 25 2013. Later Nicole Prause would falsely accuse me of misrepresenting her study. In reality, it was Prause who misrepresented her EEG study, falsely claiming that it debunked porn/sex addiction. In the intervening years, eight peer-reviewed critiques of Prause’s EEG study have been published: all 8 agree with my 2013 critique – that Prause’s actual findings support the porn addiction model.
With Prause making numerous threats, and pressure coming from her many allies, Psychology Today did cancel our blog in November of 2013, with no reason given. Lybi Ma had actually liked our posts and Prause never provided a single example of libel in our blog post about Steele et al. That said, Lybi Ma had been telling us for 3 years that she was receiving tremendous pressure about our porn-related blog posts (many are here). In fact, our tenuous position (taking on the porn industry and pro-porn sexologists) was public knowledge. RealYBOP member (and close Prause friend), Jason Winters wrote in 2012 blog post that “Wilson and Robinson were in trouble at PT.”
At the same time that Prause was threatening me and Psychology Today, she forced Psychology Today to remove this second critique of Steele et al., 2013: Misinformed Media Touts Bogus Sex Addiction Study (2013), by Robert Weiss, LCSW & Stefanie Carnes PhD.
PRAUSE:c.July 22, 2013. Gary Wilson created a Google map from his home address in Ashland, Oregon to drive to my laboratory at UCLA. I contacted police (incident #2013-047636) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I alerted all of my staff with Wilson’s photo by email to immediately call police if they saw him. I closed the lab for two weeks, instructing my research assistants to work remotely,
No evidence provided by NP. There’s no evidence because she is lying.
I never “created a google map,” and if I had, how would Prause know? Did she hack my computer? Because that’s the only way she could have accessed a “Google map.” Prause worked at UCLA (not the CIA) and her address, office number, phone number and email were available on the UCLA website – as if anyone cares.
While Prause claims to have “closed her lab and sent her assistants home,” she provides no documentation of this alleged occurrence. We seriously question the existence of a Prause only “lab” with paid research assistants at her beckon call. In reality, her “lab” was probably only her office, located in a very large building on the UCLA campus. Her claimed “research assistants” (who were sent home for 2 weeks) are probably just grad students who may occasionally check in with Prause or other researchers (not paid staff in an actual lab).
As elsewhere, Prause provides a case number, yet fails to provide a copy of her claimed incident report. While any harasser can file a fraudulent police report, a 2017 a call to the LAPD and the UCLA campus police revealed no report in their systems on a “Gary Wilson,” nor any report filed by a “Nicole Prause.” If Prause had filed a report, it was ignored by UCLA.
claimed to have filed a police report on me (there’s no evidence she did)
All in a day’s work, and designed to punish critics (hoping to inhibit further criticism) and to create a fabricated trail of victim-hood.
PRAUSE: e. July 24, 2013-August 3, 2013. Wilson posted a private photograph of me on his website that required three DMCA notices to have removed, as he kept migrating the image each time it was legally removed.
No evidence provided by NP. Prause falsehoods: 1) The picture of Prause wasn’t a private photo, as it was on a UCLA-designated website, 2) I did not migrate the image anywhere.
Here’s the reality: I wrote this Psychology Today blog post about this Nicole Prause Psychology Today interview (which contains a picture of Prause). Psychology Todayrequired at least one picture (all of my Psychology Today articles contained pictures). Since this blog post was about Nicole Prause’s interview and her EEG study (Steele et al., 2o13), it seemed appropriate to use a picture of Prause from what purported to be a UCLA website. The picture that accompanied my Psychology Today blog post was also used with this same article on YBOP.
The photo of Prause came from what I reasonably assumed was a UCLA website – SPAN Lab – and it was apparently the photo Prause had chosen to represent herself. Everything about SPAN Lab’s website gave the impression it was owned and run by UCLA. At the bottom each SPAN Lab page was the following:
Note: Prause has forbidden the “Internet WayBack Machine” from showing SPAN Lab’s archive pages, so as to conceal this fact. A screenshot of the SPAN Lab front page from August, 2013:
It is still unclear how Prause could claim copyright of a photo that was on a website that claimed its copyright was owned by UCLA. UCLA is a California state school answering to taxpayers. Presumably, its images are public. Many months later when I wrote UCLA concerning Prause’s libelous PDF, UCLA stated that SPAN Lab was Prause’s site, and not on UCLA servers(!). Why did Prause misrepresent her website as being owned by UCLA? That was the first time I learned this. Undisputed fact: Prause never contacted me to request that her picture be removed from the blog post. I knew nothing until Prause filed a DMCA request, and I found the picture missing from the article critiquing Prause’s interview and study.
So, that’s the “stolen photo’s” claim: A single picture, selected by Prause herself, from (what appeared to be) a UCLA website (but turned out to be misrepresented by Prause as a UCLA website), was used in an article about a study published and promoted by UCLA & Nicole Prause. The “porn site” was YourBrainOnPorn, a claim that is laughable, as YBOP is a porn recovery support website without X-rated content.
Addendum: In 2016, Prause falsely claimed in an AmazonAWS PDF that I migrated the picture of Prause (and the associated article) to other servers. This is completely false. The picture of Prause accompanied a single critique that appeared on two separate websites, PornStudySkeptics and YourBrainOnPorn.com. These two identical articles have remained on those two websites since July, 2013: Article 1, Article 2. In her PDF, Prause also claims that [my] ISP told [me] that they would “close his website if he did it a fourth time.” This is fabricated nonsense.
Most of these comments falsely claimed that I “stole” and placed Prause’s picture on a pornographic website.
Prause never contacted me about the picture.
Prause filed a DMCA take down about her picture, taken from a public website labeled “copyright UCLA,” which forced the company hosting YBOP to remove the picture without first contacting me.
Similar groundless comments continue to be posted to this day by Prause sockpuppets, and by Prause, on her Twitter, Quora, and Facebook accounts. The comments are often identical to the July, 2013 “anonymous” comments.
PRAUSE: d.July 30, 2013. Gary Wilson and his wife sent nearly 100-page complaint about me to UCLA. UCLA was unable to verify any of their claims and dismissed it.
No evidence provided by NP. Prause is lying.
While we wrote UCLA on July 22, 2013 concerning Prause’s harassment, threats and removal of our Psychology Today blog post, our email was only 2 pages long. More importantly, our email was factually accurate and justified (it is reproduced below).
NOTE: The links in the email further explain Prause’s threats & harassment, her misrepresentation of Steele’s actual findings, and her playing games with the correlation between “sexual desire” and EGG readings. In short, Prause’s carefully orchestrated PR campaign resulted in worldwide media coverage with all the headlines misleadingly claiming that sex addiction had been debunked. In TV interviews and in the UCLA press release Nicole Prause made two wholly unsupported claim about her EEG study:
Subjects’ brains did not respond like other addicts.
Hypersexuality (sex addiction) is best understood as “high desire.”
Neither of those findings are actually in Steele et al. 2013. In fact, the study reported the exact opposite of what Nicole Prause claimed. What Steele et al., 2013 actually stated as its “brain findings”:
“the P300 mean amplitude for the pleasant–sexual condition was more positive than the unpleasant, and pleasant–non-sexual conditions”
Translation: First, frequent porn users had greater cue-reactivity (higher EEG readings) to explicit sexual images relative to neutral pictures. This is exactly the same as what occurs when drug addicts are exposed to cues related their addiction. Second, here’s what Steele et al., 2013 actually stated as its “sexual desire findings”:
“Larger P300 amplitude differences to pleasant sexual stimuli, relative to neutral stimuli, was negatively related to measures of sexual desire, but not related to measures of hypersexuality.”
Together these two Steele et al. findings indicate greater brain activity to cues (porn images), yet less reactivity to natural rewards (sex with a person). Both are hallmarks of addiction, indicating both sensitization and desensitization. Eight peer-reviewed papers subsequently exposed expose the truth: Peer-reviewed critiques of Steele et al., 2013.
More about Prause’s brief UCLA stint. While Prause claims that she was compelled to leave a dream job at UCLA to pursue “groundbreaking research,” certain facts cannot be denied:
I urge the court to investigate the actual events surrounding Prause’s departure from UCLA, her harassment of Rory Reid, and any legal threats made by Prause towards UCLA.
PRAUSE: f. July 30, 2013. I filed a cyberstalking report with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding Gary Wilson. See Exhibit 1(M).
PRAUSE: g. October 18, 2013. Gary Wilson and his wife Marnia Robinson sent another complaint to UCLA claiming that I fabricated my data and was harassing them. The university found this complaint was false and responded to Wilson and his wife Robinson that was the case on November 8, 2013.
No evidence provided by NP. Once again, Prause has the letter in question, yet won’t cough it up because it will expose her as lying. Two lies by Prause:
Our email to UCLA was sent on December 2, 2013.
We never said that Prause “fabricated her data” (though she did misrepresent the findings of Steele et al., 2013).
Back story: In November 2013, Nicole Prause placed a PDF on her SPAN Lab website attacking Gary Wilson (screenshot below). It contained several instances of libel. The PDF’s contents are very similar to hundreds of other comments that were posted by various usernames. Posts were written by GaryWilson Stalker, GaryWilson IsAFraud and other sock puppets, apparently Prause’s. If there was ever any doubt as to who was actually behind these comments, the PDF puts an end to it. Its URL was – http://www.span-lab.com/WilsonIsAFraud.pdf.
How did I discover the above PDF? My Internet browser was redirected to the PDF when I visited the SPAN lab website (misrepresenting itself as a UCLA website). Knowing my IP address, Prause made a habit of redirecting my Internet browser to other URLs, such as porn sites or pictures of mutilated penises. This started before the PDF appeared, and continued after the PDF was removed. Also, two PDFs containing material nearly identical to Prause’s libelous PDF were uploaded onto DocStoc a few days after I published his critique of Prause’s 2013 EEG study:
I contacted UCLA to report the PDF’s defamatory statements, believing SPAN Lab was a UCLA website (at the time, SPAN Lab’s copyright was wrongly designated, by Prause, as “UCLA” and its address was within a UCLA building).
I did not hear from UCLA, so I sent a short follow-up email pointing out that the PDF remained on SPAN Lab’s website.
On March 4, 2014, UCLA acknowledged the existence of the PDF, and its subsequent removal in a letter. The CYA reply by UCLA:
UCLA’s March 2014 reply was the first indication that the SPAN Lab was really a Prause owned and maintained site. UCLA’s “bafflement” as to who might have uploaded the libelous PDF is a brilliant ass-covering response by a public institution faced with a litigious, vindictive, and soon-to-be ex-employee. Note: The SPAN Lab website was never migrated to UCLA servers.
PRAUSE: h. December 2L 2013. Gary Wilson and his wife Marnia Robinson sent yet another complaint to UCLA with false claims. UCLA also dismissed these false claims on March 4, 2014 after repeated contact by Wilson demanding “answers”.
No evidence provided by NP. See preceding sections.
As with our initial July 2013 letter, Prause fails to provide a copy of our December, 2013 letter. She knows doing so would expose her as perjuring herself.
PRAUSE: i. December 16, 2013. I filed a cyberstalking report with the FBI regarding Gary Wilson due to his increasing violations of my no-contact request and harassment with UCLA. See Exhibit 1(M).
No evidence provided by NP. Only a 2019 picture of someone holding a CD. Already debunked in a preceding section. As explained in previous sections:
I am not subject to any “no contact order.” Only courts and regulatory bodies issue “orders,” as that word is commonly understood, and only then after giving both parties the chance to be heard. This has never occurred, although I would have welcomed it.
As for initiating “contact,” Prause has mentioned me hundreds of times on social media. Her many aliases have also directly “contacted,” harassed and defamed me on multiple platforms.
More lies by Prause (the link is dead). Gnostic Media is not a “white-supremacist” or antisemitic podcast, and its host Jan Irvin is not a white supremacist or antisemitic. To the contrary, Jan Irvin was a regular guest on the Joe Rogan experience, and has been recently attacked for being a “shill for the Jews.” Regardless of Jan Irvin’s beliefs in 2014, or his current beliefs, Irvin and I discussed only the effects of internet pornography. A link to the 2014 podcast: https://logosmedia.com/2014/01/.
It’s true that that 2014 Jan Irvin (Gnostic Media) interview was posted on the now-defunct Daily Stormer website, but so were countless other articles, videos, and podcasts that had nothing to do race, religion, or white supremacy. Importantly, anyone (including those endeavoring to fuel a smear campaign) could have posted Irvin’s podcast on The Daily Stormer, and then mischaracterized it – just as anyone can post anything on Reddit or Quora.
Important to note: because Jan Irvin is not a white supremacist or antisemitic, none of his other podcasts ever made it on to the Daily Stormer website. We have long suspected that Prause herself may have posted my podcasts on white-supremacist forums (even though my podcasts have nothing to with race or politics and the hosts are not white supremacists).
Note: The entire original Daily Stormer site was taken down (along with the Jan Irvin podcast I did). But as soon as its successor site appeared, my podcast was mysteriously re-posted, and news of its presence was tweeted by Prause’s biggest fans and an account that regularly joins her in cyberstalking me: @sexualsocialist.
It was clear that Prause created the above screenshot as @sexualsocialist would not know about its existence, and the YourBrainOnPorn UK trademark was provided to Prause’s lawyers in my trademark infringement case. Moreover, Prause has been falsely claiming for over 3 years that I am paid by The Reward Foundation. It’s no coincidence that PornHub, Prause’s regular account and David Ley all liked the defamatory tweet (PornHub’s was the first Twitter account to tweet about RealYBOp’s new Twitter account and website when it appeared):
Since @sexualsocialist “found it” RealYBOP & Prause have tweeted this screenshot dozens of times.
The truth: I am, in fact, a far left liberal and the very antithesis of a white supremacist. I abhor, and condemn, such views. I spent my adolescence living in a predominantly black neighborhood and two of my close relatives are married to African Americans. For my account of the truth, listen to this interview: Porn Science and Science Deniers (Interview with Wilson).
A second truth: For over 3 years Prause and David Ley (and colleagues) have been waging a disgusting smear campaign to falsely paint Alex Rhodes and me as white supremacists or anti-Semites. One of the reasons Alex Rhodes is now suing Prause for defamation is that she falsely accused Alex of being a supporter of white supremacists and anti-Semites. On the following pages I have documented Ley and Prause’s revolting history of posting fabricated evidence to connect me, Alex, Gabe Deem and other targets, to white supremacy and antisemitism. These extensive sections contain over 100 instances of Prause, Ley, RealYBOP and their Twitter cronies cyberstalking Gabe, Alex and me with false accusation of being white supremacists/Nazis.
Rather than painting me as a white supremacist, Prause’s numerous libelous claims that I am a white supremacist (using only fabricated “non-evidence)” expose her and David Ley as serial cyberstalkers, harassers and smear campaigners.
PRAUSE: k. September 24, 2015. Following further escalation of unwanted contact, I filed a protective order against Gary Wilson in Oregon. The Oregon courts stated that it needed to be filed in Los Angeles. I was concerned that Wilson would use that appearance to discover my home address, and declined to move the filing to Los Angeles.
No evidence provided by NP. As with nearly every other claim by Prause, she cannot provide documents that should be in her possession – such as a “protective order” filed in Oregon. Funny how the Oregon courts never informed me of this supposed order. Prause was “concerned,” because she would have to provide evidence of my stalking her when she has none.
PRAUSE:l.October 15, 2015. I hired an attorney, Jed White, JD, to send a cease and desist letter to Gary Wilson and his wife Marnia Robinson to stop their defamation and to stop contacting me. See Cease and Desist Correspondence, attached hereto as Exhibit 1(N).
Context: Prause has a history of sending spurious cease and desist (C&D) letters to people who question her unsupported assertions. She claims to have sent (at least) seven such letters, which she has repeatedly, maliciously mischaracterized on social media as “no contact orders.” Only courts and regulatory bodies issue “orders,” as that word is commonly understood, and only then after giving both parties the chance to be heard. Prause’s C&D letters to anyone who questions her come from her lawyer, not a judge, and seem expressly intended to stifle criticism and honest debate. She then uses them to send to journalists and producers as “fact” to discourage them from hosting or quoting her critics.
Worse, on the basis of merely sending these unsubstantiated letters, Prause insists she has the legal right to prevent anyone who has received such a letter from defending against, or replying to, her demeaning online statements about them or others – even if they simply wish to supply evidence that counters her untrue statements. When those letter-recipients try to speak out, she publicly and falsely accuses them of “violating no contact orders” and of “harassment.” The clear, and clearly false, implication of her statements is to suggest these people are acting illegally. Her aggressive tactics and knowingly false accusations appear calculated to bully and intimidate her detractors into silence.
Finally, the recipients of the various C&D letters report that Prause’s lists of wrongdoings were manufactured lies. Anyone can pay an internet-based lawyer, or any lawyer of questionable ethics, to write spurious C&D letters.
On to her lies about me and my unanswered rebuttal. On October 15, 2015, I received a cease and desist letter from a lawyer representing Nicole Prause. A year later Prause published her cease and desist letter on AmazonAWS, and linked to it under a petition to Psychology Today (the petition asked Psychology Today to reconsider its editorial policy). Prause commented under the petition multiple times saying that members of two organizations (IITAP & SASH) were all “openly sexist and assaultive to scientists.” In a strange disconnect, the main evidence Prause supplied for this blanket statement was the cease and desist letter sent only to me, reproduced below. I am not a member of SASH or IITAP.
All four claims in the above cease & desist letter are empty. Gary Wilson wrote the following letter asking both Prause and her lawyer to provide evidence to support their allegations. Wilson’s letter in full:
In the intervening 4.5 years neither Prause nor her lawyer has responded. Neither has provided any evidence to support Prause’s allegations – because the allegations are false.
It’s clear that Prause’s motivation was threefold:
to intimidate me so that I might remove my critiques of Prause’s studies,
to create a letter she could show her allies as “proof positive” that I was harassing her (even though it is proof of nothing and fabricated),
to produce an “official letter” to show journalists and producers, so as to discourage them from contacting me.
PRAUSE: m.October 27, 2015. Gary Wilson contacted the UCLA Office of Intellectual Property requesting information about my company’s participation in their startup program.
No evidence provided by NP. Prause is lying. I did not do this. Prause was long gone from UCLA by then. I have no reason to think she was ever in UCLA’s startup program. And whether she was or wasn’t, why should she care who seeks information about it? As with nearly every other claim by Prause, she cannot provide documents that should be in her possession – such as emails from me to the UCLA Office of Intellectual Property. This is because they do not exist.
PRAUSE:n. March 2016. Someone tried to gain entry to my home, asking where my unit was using my name, but they were stopped by the management company.
No evidence provided by NP. If “they” were stopped by the management company, there should be a record of the incident and description of the individual. Where’s the documentation?
Various friends and relatives are prepared to testify under oath that they fear for my safety. They are concerned that Prause might track me down, maybe try to kill me (I’m not kidding). This is how completely unhinged Prause appears to observers.
PRAUSE: o. March 10, 2016. 1 ordered and installed security hardware for my home due to Wilson’s continued harassment and fear that he had physically located my home.
No evidence provided by NP. Fabricated victim-hood. I can’t recall being in Los Angeles since before I heard of Nicole Prause (March, 2013), and I have never stated an intention to visit Los Angeles.
Again, various friends and relatives are prepared to testify under oath that they fear for my safety. They are concerned that Prause might track me down, maybe try to kill me. This is how completely unhinged Prause appears to observers.
PRAUSE: p. April 5, 2016. 1 required security at a public talk at a Jewish center in San Francisco from fear Gary Wilson would try to attend or send white supremacists to attack the center.
No evidence provided by NP. Prause and David Ley’s disgusting smear campaign to paint me, Alex Rhodes, Gabe Deem and others as white supremacists is addressed elsewhere on this page (Ley is now being paid by the porn industry). This revolting lie, in part, led to Alex Rhodes suing Prause for defamation. Prause has gone so far as to say that Jews who are anti-porn are antisemitic!
Again, various friends and relatives are prepared to testify under oath that they fear for my safety, given Prause’s vicious and irrational actions. They are concerned that Prause might track me down and try to kill me. This is how completely unhinged Prause appears to observers.
PRAUSE: q April 12, 2016. Gary Wilson and Marnia Robinson contacted UCLA after they knew I no longer worked there, demanding that UCLA investigate me, demanding that UCLA publicly denounce me, claiming UCLA was being naïve and making additional false claims. UCLA also found no grounds for these
No evidence provided by NP. Prause is lying. We did not contact UCLA in 2016 (or in 2015). Yet another example of Prause possessing any emails in question, yet mysteriously unable to provide the court with said emails.
Our last email to UCLA occurred on March 10, 2014 and was in response to UCLA’s March 4, 2014 ass-covering reply produced in above section:
That’s the last time we wrote UCLA.
PRAUSE: r. August 9, 2016. 1 required security from Gary Wilson at a talk for the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists.
No evidence provided by NP. More fabricated victim-hood. I have never stated an intention to attend any presentation by Prause. Quite the opposite, as I find her actions unconscionable and her propaganda nauseating. Once again, we have Prause making claims she cannot back up.
PRAUSE: s. October 4, 2016. Gary Wilson joked on Twitter about physically stalking me.
No evidence provided by NP. I have never stalked anyone, including Prause. As explained in the intro, I can’ remember being in Los Angeles since I first heard of Prause’s existence (March, 2013). Once again, Prause should be able to provide a screenshot of my supposed tweet, but cannot. If Prause doesn’t want to be the butt of jokes then I suggest she refrain from falsely accusing me of things I did not do.
PRAUSE: t. December 2016. Gary Wilson and Stefanie Carnes sent identical complaints to the California Board of Psychology against my professional license making false allegations already reviewed and dismissed by UCLA. The Board of Psychology has informed my attorney and I that there are no negative findings. No patients were ever involved. The board concluded the complaints were low priority. Wilson continues to regularly post publicly that I am “under investigation by the state of California” without admitting he filed the fraudulent complaints himself in an obvious abuse of state resources.
No evidence provided by NP. Prause has a copy of my complaint, yet fails to provide it to the court.
First, I never publicly stated that Prause was under investigation by California until after she publicly stated in a June, 2018, factually inaccurate hit-piece, that I had filed a complaint (in October, 2016). Prause falsely stated that the California Psychology Board complaint had terminated, which I knew to be untrue:
In my comment (which was edited by admins) under the factually inaccurate hit-piece, I corrected Prause’s falsehood:
Second, I have no idea what Stefanie Carnes filed with California, but I know it was not “identical” to my complaint. I sent California the entire contents (as of October, 2016) of the 2 main pages chronicling Prause’s long history of defamation and harassment:
I seriously doubt that Stefanie Carnes merely sent the contents of the above two pages to the California Psychology Board as her complaint.
PRAUSE: u. June 12, 2017. A Gary Wilson follower posts that I should be raped.
No evidence provided by NP.
I have no “followers.” I run YourBrainOnPorn.com. It has no forum and doesn’t allow anyone to comment. Once again, if Prause possessed a screenshot of a so-called Gary Wilson “follower” threatening to rape her, she would have supplied it to the court.
Prause is lying, just as she lied about Alex Rhodes and Fight The New Drug telling their “followers” to rape her. Prause makes these libelous assertions, yet has never provided any evidence. These sections expose Prause’s false rape allegations:
As Diana Davison revealed in the comments section under her 6-minute expose’ Prause failed to provide one iota of evidence to support her claims:
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All you need to know: Prause cut off communications with investigative journalist Davison when asked for any evidence to support her claims.
PRAUSE: v. September 1, 2017. Gary Wilson appeared on white supremacist show Stefan Molyneux (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhqx7yctQVk) and extensively promotes this show on his Twitter @YourBrainOnPorn,
More lies by Prause. Where are the links to my Twitter account’s tweets purportedly extensively promoting the Molyneux podcast? They don’t exist. Unlike Prause, I haven’t deleted my tweets, so they should be easy to find. Nor is the Molyneux interview promoted on my website YBOP, as it has never been placed on the front page. It was just another podcast.
NOTE: I have no idea what Molyneux’s politics are. Nor did I know when he asked to interview me years ago. At that time, I investigated him and couldn’t find anything indicating his views on race. As you can hear in our interview below, we talked about porn’s effects, not politics. I have done dozens of interviews and podcasts. How am I supposed to find every lame idea expressed by a potential interviewer (or what an interviewer might say after our interview)?
Since then, trademark infringing RealYBOP Twitter (apparently managed by Prause and Daniel Burgess) and several members of RealYBOP, have been spreading Molyneux’s podcast interview with me via social media and private emails, claiming that Molyneux is a white supremacist and that my appearance on his show means I’m a white supremacist. Let’s be very clear: my harassers and cyberstalkers, Nicole Prause and David Ley, are the ones who initiated this disgusting smear campaign about me years ago. They are the ones who, with the aid of their colleagues, are promoting it. Whatever Molyneux’s views, it is, of course, absurd to suggest that his views are mine without any evidence whatsoever. Is Joe Rogan now a white supremacist because he regularly invited Stefan Molyneux onto his podcast?
Unlike me, Joe Rogan was well aware of Molyneux’s views. I, in contrast, was only a guest on Molyneux’s podcast, there to discuss internet porn (and nothing else).
The truth: I am, in fact, a far left liberal and the very antithesis of a white supremacist. I abhor, and condemn, such views. I spent my adolescence living in a predominantly black neighborhood and two of my close relatives are married to African Americans. For my account of the truth, listen to this interview: Porn Science and Science Deniers (Interview with Wilson).
Several supporters wonder why I haven’t removed this interview from the backwaters of my 13,000 page website. The answer: because my harassers Nicole Prause and RealYBOP on Twitter have falsely claimed numerous times that “Gary Wilson is trying to hide the Molyneux podcast.” In fact, I am neither hiding nor promoting it. It was just another podcast – out of the dozens I have done. It doesn’t discuss racial politics at all, and I want listeners to be able to hear it and judge the truth for themselves.
Please note that labeling others (and then attempting to establish “guilt by association”) is a favorite tactic of those who can’t take on the substance of the porn debate. Have a look at these sections of a page documenting some of the many related attacks I and others have been subjected to:
Perhaps most illustrative of Prause’s character in this saga is her charge that Rhodes is a Nazi and white-supremacist, as detailed in the lawsuit. This should not surprise anyone who has been paying attention since 2016. The minute an SJW disagrees with someone, that person becomes a Nazi. Rhodes’s crime? He allowed political commentator Gavin McInnes to interview him while he was still working for Vice. And since Prause found out that Rhodes spoke to McInnes one time and didn’t throw a drink in his face, she has been accusing him of supporting the Proud Boys (who got in a lot of trouble for street brawling with Antifa). It’s still a stretch, in my opinion, to call the Proud Boys anything but a male drinking club, but Rhodes actually has disavowed the Proud Boys as an “extremist group” on several occasions. He was never a member, nor a supporter. No Fap has never been political and is dedicated to providing addiction help to anyone who needs it. This does not stop Prause from continuing to link him to “white supremacists” through the weak association of one interview with McInnes, who isn’t a white supremacist either.
The lawsuit should be interesting to watch as it opens up statements on Twitter to legal scrutiny. Will Prause be held accountable for publishing false claims on social media?
Investigative journalist Diana Davison also questioned Prause and Ley’s fabrications in her Post Millennial expose’ on Nicole Prause. In her article, Davison debunks the Prause talking point that Rhodes is connected to Proud Boys and thus a white supremacist (which was repeated in VICE’s hit-piece featuring Ley, Prause, and two Porn industry executives):
In a recent Vice article, Prause is quoted saying “”Alexander Rhodes and NoFap’s lawsuit has no merit nor do his libelous and unfounded assertions regarding me, my character, or my business,” adding that Rhodes is “entitled to his opinions, however he is not entitled to spread complete falsehoods about me to profit himself and silence speech.”
The author of the same Vice article then goes on to call NoFap’s principles “slippery,” and attempts to link Rhodes to white supremacists by citing an April 2016 interview with Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys, despite that group being founded many months later. Ironically, McInnes was a co-founder of Vice and thus has a much stronger connection to their own publication than to Alexander Rhodes or NoFap.
It’s highly likely that Prause fed VICE the easily disproven “link” between Alex Rhodes and the Proud Boys. As explained in Rhodes’s defamation suit complaint against Prause, her false allegations that Rhodes “works with the Proud Boys” is one of the reasons she is being sued:
Defendants published and re-published the False Statements of and concerning Plaintiff Rhodes on the Internet, and other mediums, asserting and creating the false impression that, among other things, Plaintiff Rhodes stalks women, makes rape threats, is a misogynist, works with the extremist group “Proud Boys”, and is in violation of no-contact/restraining orders. Further, Defendants published and republished allegations that NoFap supports the extremist/hate group “Proud Boys”, promotes misogyny, promotes rape threats, and generally is a hate group.
PRAUSE: w. January 18, 2018. Gary Wilson was ejected from a scientific conference, the annual conference of the European Society for Sexual Medicine, by their attorney prior to the conference start when they discovered his true background. He was not giving a keynote address as he claimed. I had just given an actual keynote address at this conference, so Wilson knew I was attending. I had no control over their decision to eject him.
No evidence provided by NP. Multiple instances of Prause perjuring herself.
Context: In the fall of 2017, the Scientific Chairs of the World Meeting on Sexual Medicine, organized by the International Society for Sexual Medicine (ISSM) and the European Society for Sexual Medicine (ESSM), invited me to give a keynote address at their combined conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Unlike sexology conferences, the speakers and attendees at this one are primarily medically oriented urologists. The conference committee wanted me to present about porn-induced sexual dysfunctions. I was, after all, the second author on the highly cited “Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports” and had given a very popular TEDx talk, “The Great Porn Experiment,” which touched on porn-induced ED. A screenshot of the formal invitation:
Addressing Prause’s falsehoods claim by claim:
PRAUSE: “He was not giving a keynote address as he claimed.”
Contrary to this lie, I was invited European Society for Sexual Medicine to give a keynote address (they sought me out; I did not ask to speak at the 2018 conference). Vivian Gies, of the ISSM Executive Office, sent four emails attempting to invite me to Portugal to give a Keynote lecture (the emails ended up in a spam folder and were later discovered). Below is a screenshot of last two of ISSM’s four emails attempting to invite me:
It was ultimately decided that the talk would be entitled, “Porn-Induced Sexual Dysfunctions.” It would be modeled on my July, 2017, Mexico City presentation to urologists. Screenshot of the keynote lecture as it originally appeared (before Prause lied to ISSM, which resulted in my talk’s cancellation): https://issmessm2018.org/
PRAUSE: “I had just given an actual keynote address at this conference, so Wilson knew I was attending.”
Prause’s fabricated narrative is that I knew she was attending, so I therefore contacted the ISSM, asking for a speaking gig. Not true, as the ISSM contacted me. Prause neither attended nor was scheduled to speak. Screenshot of the very first email from the ISSM on July 7, 2017 inviting me to speak (email temporarily went to a spam folder):
PRAUSE: “Gary Wilson was ejected from a scientific conference, the annual conference of the European Society for Sexual Medicine, by their attorney prior to the conference start when they discovered his true background.”
First, I was not ejected from the conference, but my keynote address was mysteriously canceled on January 12, 2018 (“due to program issues”):
Far from being “ejected,” I was thoroughly compensated for the “program-issues” cancellation. In fact, the ISSM went beyond the usual compensation and paid for plane flights and hotel for both my wife and me. Countering Prause’s lie that I was “ejected from the conference,” even after the canceled talk, I was invited to attend the conference, free of charge (and asked if I wanted a room in the conference hotel):
In relation to Prause’s assertions about the committee discovering my true background, it’s important to point out that I had initially informed the organizing committee that I did not have a PhD or MD. The committee assured me this was not a problem, and insisted I present. Here’s the email confirming this account:
PRAUSE: ” I had no control over their decision to eject him.”
Cleverly worded to obfuscate the fact it was most likelyh Prause herself who contacted ISSM organizers and fed them a bunch lies (perhaps via her close friend Jim Pfaus), which resulted in my talked being cancelled. Twelve days later (January 24, 2018) Prause informs David Ley that Gary Wilson was “removed for an actual good reason from a conference.” (She’s the only one who seems to “know” this.)
A double lie by Prause:
I was not removed for “an actual good reason.” Prause no doubt lied to ISSM supplying her fake “evidence.”
Prause’s claim that I posted on Quora more “than a hundred times in the last month” is also false. In my 4 years on Quora, I only posted 122 times. Between the time that I received the email from the ISSM committee (1-12-2018), and Prause’s Facebook comment above (1-24-18), I posted exactly zero times on Quora. PDF of Quora posts during this period. See my my entire timeline of Quora posts.
PRAUSE: x. March 7., 2018. Gary Wilson is banned from the Quora platform because he created a second fake account to stalk my own account. This was a violation of their terms of service.
No evidence provided by NP. Quite the opposite is true: Prause was permanently banned from Quora for posting my employment records and harassing me.
The story: On March 3rd 2018, Nicole Prause posted a defamatory article on Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-your-brain-on-porn-movement/answer/Nicole-Prause. In her hit-piece, Prause posted redacted copies of my employment records and knowingly, falsely stated that Southern Oregon University had fired me. On March 3rd & 4th Prause posted ten more demeaning and untruthful comments about me and my work, all containing a link to her defamatory piece:
I reported Prause to both Quora and Twitter for violation of terms of service and harassment. Both acted upon my complaints, removing my employment document and Prause’s false interpretation of it. Confirmation of Quora acting on my complaint (not the first violation for harassing me):
As a result, Quora permanently bans Nicole Prause for harassment:
In addition to the permanent Quora ban, on March 12, 2018 Prause’s Twitter account was suspended for posting my private information in violation of Twitter rules. I reported Prause’s violation. Twitter’s reply:
PRAUSE: April 22, 2018. Wilson appeared uninvited to a Behavioral Addictions meeting in Cologne, Germany, scaring a number of scientists in attendance who discussed security concerns regarding his presence.
No evidence provided by NP. This is pure fiction. Yes, I traveled to Germany to attend the 2018 5th International Conference on Behavioral Addictions, for which I had registered months earlier. No one was “frightened.” As for “being invited,” anyone can register to attend an ICBA conference. They feature experts on behavioral addictions from all over the world, and my website features much research by experts who present at the ICBA.
As discussed elsewhere, Prause reported me to the LAPD for attending a German conference,falsely claiming she wanted to attend (but didn’t dare because she was supposedly frightened of me). The untrue part is that Prause had any intention of attending the ICBA conference in Germany. Prause has never attended, or presented, at an ICBA conference. Prause doesn’t believe in behavioral addictions. Throughout her entire career Prause has waged a war against the concept of behavioral addiction, especially sex and porn addiction. Prause thus filed a false police report.
PRAUSE: Finally, Hilton has sent the lawsuit documents to Gary Wilson before they were publicly available for all three filings, which Wilson did post on both his website (www.yourbrainonporn.com) and his wife’s website (www.pornstudycritiques.com), never with my response. Wilson further submitted Hilton’s statement to Google Scholar, which would result in Hilton’s statement to the court being emailed to thousands of scientists.
No evidence provided by NP. Another instance of Prause perjuring herself.
Don Hilton did not send his “lawsuit documents” to me. All court documents were available online via PACER, at this link – https://www.pacermonitor.com/case/28807982/Hilton_v_Prause_et_al
Nor did I submit “Hilton’s statement to Google Scholar.” I didn’t even know one could submit links to Google Scholar (if this is in fact true). That said, I do hope that researchers read the documents, follow the links, and discover the truth about Nicole Prause. She has been skewing the field with her harassment, scare tactics, defamation, and falsehoods for way too long. There needs to be a full investigation into her behind-the-scenes activities at academic journals, governing boards and media outlets. Just for starters.
PRAUSE: z. April 25, 2018 I reported these escalations to physical stalking to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) report # 180809436 and the FBI. See Exhibit 1(M).
No evidence other than a screenshot of a CD! Seven years of claimed police and FBI reports and no law enforcement agency has bothered to contact me. Prause is either lying about her many reports or the law enforcement agencies think she is a lunatic.
LAPD report # 180809436: As chronicled in the introduction, here’s the reality:
Starting in July, 2013 (a few days after I published a careful critique of Prause’s first EEG study), various usernames began posting defamatory comments wherever my name appeared. The comments were very similar in content and tone, falsely claiming that “Wilson has a police report filed on him,” “Wilson is charged with stalking a poor woman,” and “Wilson stole a woman’s pictures and placed them on a porn site,” and “Wilson has been reported to LAPD (which agrees that he’s dangerous) and the UCLA campus police.”
By 2016, as Prause was no longer employed by UCLA or any other institution that could rein in her cyber-harassment, she finally began to identify Gary Wilson as the “person” she had reported to the LAPD and the UCLA campus police. I can’t remember having been to LA in years. It’s almost 2020, and no law enforcement agency has ever contacted me. (Any harasser can file a fake police report.)
I presumed that Prause had, in fact, filed fraudulent, groundless reports (which were subsequently disregarded), but it turned out Prause was lying – again. In late 2017 a call to the Los Angeles Police Department and the UCLA campus police revealed no report in their systems on a “Gary Wilson,” nor any report filed by a “Nicole Prause.” I made this section to report my findings: Los Angeles Police Department and UCLA campus police confirm that Prause lied about filing police reports on Gary Wilson.
Note that I did not learn of this malicious police report from the police. I learned of it a year later, when college journalists (and misinformed Prause devotees) publicly reproduced it online in the university newspaper. It has since been removed by University of Wisconsin authorities.
If I have been physically stalking her, why doesn’t any police report describe me as doing so? It’s simple: Prause is afraid of being arrested for knowingly filing a police report falsely accusing me of an actual crime.
As described here in the introduction, Diana Davison became the first journalist to investigate Prause’s claims of victim-hood. Over the week of their communications, Prause was unable to provide any evidence other than her silly LAPD report (above) of me attending a German conference Prause lied about wanting to attend. Davison’s expose’ is here: The Post Millennial expose’ on Nicole Prause. Diana Davison also produced this 6-minute video about Prause’s fake victim-hood and the defamation lawsuits filed against Prause.
Diana Davison explained in the comment section that Prause failed to provide any evidence of being stalked, cyberstalked or harassed.
Davison makes fun of Prause’s ludicrous police report where I was supposedly wearing a sleeping bag and armed with a long sleeve sweater (note that Prause’s report never claimed I was seen in LA or that I was stalking her).
When asked to provide any other evidence, Prause ceased communications with Davison.
I request that the court demand from Prause all her supposed reports claimed to have been filed on me, Alex Rhodes and others. If Prause has indeed filed a police or FBI report on me I will report her to California authorities for filing a false police report.
PRAUSE: aa. August 31, 2018. I required security from Gary Wilson at a talk for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality where I would be debating Dr. Marc Potenza regarding sex addiction.
No evidence provided by NP. For the tenth time or so, I have never had, or expressed, an intention to attend any presentation by Prause. Quite the opposite, as I find her actions and misrepresentation of the research shocking. More fake victim-hood from a pathological liar.
PRAUSE: bb. February 19, 2019. Gary Wilson and his wife Marnia Robinson contacted the National Organization of Rare Diseases (NORD) requesting that my competitive grant from them, which had nothing to do with pornography, be rescinded. NORD requested my assistance in getting Wilson and Robinson to stop harassing them, as the pair continued to email NORD over and over.
No evidence provided by NP. Prause is perjuring herself. Neither I nor my wife have ever contacted NORD, nor have we ever been contacted by NORD. If Prause had any documentation she would provide it. She doesn’t, because she is lying.
Nicole Prause’s Malicious Reporting and Malicious Use of Process
Nicole Prause has shown a consistent and troubling pattern of (1) filing groundless, malicious complaints and lawsuits, and (2) threatening or publicly claiming she has filed such actions when she has not done so. (Three main pages documenting Prause’s behaviors: 1, 2, 3.)
Below is a partial list of such complaints and false claims. (Out of fear of reprisal we have been asked to omit additional individuals and organizations.) Also, Prause regularly claims “whistleblower status” to keep her activities under the radar. So, there are likely other, non-public complaints in addition to those listed here.
The baseless administrative complaints Prause actually lodged were generally dismissed as nuisance filings. However, a few led to time-consuming investigations that were ultimately dismissed or produced little in the way of substantive results. (PDF Documenting Prause’s Malicious Reporting Pattern & Malicious Use of Process).
Fight the New Drug – Reported to Utah’s Division of Child and Family Services on the theory that sharing first-hand stories of porn recovery constituted the abuse of minors. DCFC took no action.
Rory Reid PhD – Prause’s former colleague at UCLA. Appears to have been reported to UCLA (and perhaps to the California Psychology Board). Prause’s attacks on him began concurrently with UCLA’s decision not to renew her contract, bringing her academic career to an end.
Five documents currently on Prause’s AmazonAWS website urging readers to report Rory Reid to the state of California: page1, page2, page3, page4, page5.
Prause reported Rhodes to the Pennsylvania Board of Psychology for practicing psychology without a license because CNN filmed him in a group with other young men, all talking about porn’s effects. No therapy was offered or provided. (Investigation in progress). RealYBOP tweet asking followers to report Rhodes to psych Board.
Don Hilton, MD – Reported to the university where he mentors neurosurgery students, the Texas Medical Board, and academic journals with unfounded claims that he faked his credentials (No action)
Keren Landman, MD – Prause asked VICE magazine to terminate expert Dr. Landman for writing an article recommending use of condoms in porn in support of Proposition 60. Unbelievable.
(Apparently) reported Wilson to the ISSM (International Society for Sexual Medicine) for heaven knows what, which canceled his keynote address scheduled for March, 2018 in Lisbon without giving a reason. Then Prause began a social media campaign saying someone had been “removed for an actual good reason from a conference,” and claimed (again) that Gary had misrepresented his credentials (he hadn’t). Gary soon received his Oregon Psychology Board exoneration (see above), so she may also have told the ISSM earlier that he had been “reported for practicing psychology without a license” among other untruths – in order to persuade the ISSM to cancel him.
February, 2020: When the above C&D failed, Prause called Wilson’s local Ashland Police, attempting to file a false police report, lying that her home address was on YBOP. Officer Jason St. John determined Prause’s claims did not allege a crime and that this was a civil matter.
On February 12 or thereabouts, Prause sought a temporary restraining order against Wilson, based in part on pictures of people (quite obviously not Wilson) holding guns. The judge denied the TRO, but set a hearing for a permanent restraining order on March 6, 2020. Prause did not serve Wilson, but Wilson’s counsel appeared as if she had, thus waiving service. The judge continued the matter until March 25, 2020, stating that he intends to force the parties to attend mediation before ruling, if Prause serves Wilson.
Prause has also repeatedly, publicly urged members of the public, via social media, to report professionals and professional organizations to psychology boards, to the FTC, and to the Attorney General. Sections of Prause page with documentation:
After years of malicious administrative reporting, spurious cease & desist letters, and misuse of law enforcement personnel, Prause, in 2019, began abusing the court system (and the targets of her wrath) with malicious legal proceedings (and continued threats of legal proceedings) in order to silence anyone who calls attention to her bias or activity.
As recounted above, she filed an invalid small claims court suit against therapist Sprout, and a baseless restraining order against Wilson.
PRAUSE: cc. Feb 22, 2019. Gary Wilson tells reported Chad Sokol with Donald Hilton that I am involved in the pornography industry and attended the AVN awards.
No evidence provided by NP. Everything associated with the Sokol email and Prause lying about attending the XRCO were fully addressed in this earlier section. Once again, here’s the PDF of Gary Wilson’s email to Don Hilton, MD. The following was forwarded to reporter Chad Sokol:
Thu 2/21/2019 4:32 PM
Hi Don,
Here are the 4 main pages that were created to counter the ongoing harassment and false claims made by former UCLA researcher Nicole Prause as part of an ongoing “astroturf” campaign to persuade people that anyone who disagrees with her conclusions deserves to be reviled:
Prause has harassed and defamed at least four of the speakers in the February 23 conference: Don Hilton, Gail Dines, Clay Olsen and Stefanie Carnes. One can search the table of contents for each name or organization (i.e. Fight The New Drug, IITAP): Nicole Prause’s Unethical Harassment and Defamation of Gary Wilson & Others. For example, Prause has defamed you on multiple occasions, as documented in these sections of the “Prause pages”:
Anyone investigating this should know that Dr. Prause has not been employed by any university for 4 years. Her contract with UCLA was not renewed. Freed from any oversight and now self-employed, Prause added two media managers/promoters from Media 2×3 to her company’s tiny stable of “Collaborators.” Their job is to place articles in the press featuring Prause, and find her speaking engagements in pro-porn and mainstream venues. Odd behavior for a supposedly impartial scientist.
Since I was Prause’s primary target (hundreds of social media comments along with behind-the-scenes email campaigns), it became necessary to monitor and document Prause’s tweets and posts. This was done for her victims’ protection, and crucial for any future legal actions.
After years of sitting on the evidence, Prause’s unilateral aggression had escalated to such frequent and reckless defamation (falsely accusing her many victims of “physically stalking her,” “misogyny,” “encouraging others to rape her,” and “being neo-nazis”), that we felt compelled to examine her possible motives. So we created this extensive page, which is just the tip pf the Prause iceberg: Is Nicole Prause Influenced by the Porn Industry?
In addition, the FSC (which has spent millions on lawsuits that benefit the porn industry) offered Prause assistance with respect to her so-called “bullies.”
The real bully here was Prause, who had her Twitter account permanently banned for harassment and cyber-stalking. Instead of revealing the facts, Prause fabricated a tall-tale that John Adler MD (Stanford) somehow got her kicked off Twitter.
Freed from any oversight and now self-employed, Prause added two media managers/promoters from Media 2×3 to her company’s tiny stable of “Collaborators.” (Media 2×3 president Jess Ponce describes himself as a Hollywood media coach and personal branding expert.) Their job is to place articles in the press featuring Prause, and find her speaking engagements in pro-porn and mainstream venues. Odd tactics for a supposedly impartial scientist.
Wikipedia prohibits sockpuppet accounts, but it polices them poorly. Not only that, even when it discovers evidence of sockpuppet accounts and bans them, it doesn’t always reverse the edits of the cheater. So, there’s a strong incentive for biased Wikipedia contributors to create new accounts to lay their poisoned eggs in the Wikipedia nest. “Crime” pays in this instance.
