Nicole Prause touts yet another of her letters to the editor as “debunking” the existence of sex addiction and porn addiction (“Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder” in the upcoming ICD-11). Yet it does not. This 240-word opinion piece (Prause et al., 2017) cites zero studies to support its claims, providing only a single, easily refuted sentence as its sole “evidence” countering the addiction model.
This Prause-penned letter in Lancet, signed by four allies (Erick Janssen, Janniko Georgiadis, Peter Finn and James Pfaus), was a reply to another short letter: Is excessive sexual behaviour an addictive disorder? (Potenza et. al., 2017), authored by Marc Potenza, Mateusz Gola, Valerie Voon, Ariel Kor and Shane Kraus. (Both are reproduced below in full.)
Incidentally, three of Prause’s four co-signers in Lancet also lent their names to her earlier 2016 Salt Lake Tribune Op-Ed attacking Fight The New Drug and its position on internet porn. That Salt Lake Tribune 600-word Op-Ed was chock full of unsupported assertions calculated to mislead the lay public. And its authors, Prause and friends, failed to support a single claim. The Op-Ed cited only 4 papers – none of which had anything to do with porn addiction, porn’s effects on relationships, or porn-induced sexual problems. Several experts responded with this dismantling of the Prause Op-Ed: Op-Ed: Who exactly is misrepresenting the science on pornography? (2016). Unlike the “neuroscientists” of the initial Op-Ed, the response authors cited several hundred studies and multiple reviews of the literature that supported their statements.
The one PhD in the Lancet effort who is missing from the Salt Lake Tribune Op-Ed (Peter Finn) happened to co-author a 2014 propaganda piece with Prause and David Ley (the author of The Myth of Sex Addiction), entitled The Emperor Has No Clothes: A Review of the ‘Pornography Addiction’ Model (2014). The paper was not a genuine review, and, difficult as it may be to believe, virtually nothing in the Ley/Prause/Finn paper is accurate or supported by the citations within the paper. The following is a very long analysis of the paper which goes line-by-line, citation by citation, exposing the many shenanigans Ley/Prause/Finn incorporated in their “review”: The Emperor Has No Clothes: A Fractured Fairytale Posing As A Review. Its most remarkable aspect is that it omitted any study that either reported negative effects related to porn use or found porn addiction – and yet labelled itself a “review!”
Turning to Prause’s Lancet effort, we should mention that not one of the five Prause et al., 2017 signers has ever published a study involving verified “porn or sex addicts.” Moreover, some who signed Prause’s Lancet letter have histories of feverishly attacking the concept of porn and sex addiction (thus demonstrating stark bias). In contrast, each of the five Potenza et al. 2017 co-authors (who wrote the first letter on this subject in Lancet) has published multiple studies involving subjects with compulsive sexual behavior disorder (including landmark brain studies on porn users and sex addicts).
In their Comment in The Lancet Psychiatry, John B Saunders and colleagues1aptly described current debates regarding the consideration and classification of gambling and gaming disorders as addictive disorders, which occurred during the generation of DSM-52 and in anticipation of ICD-11.3 Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder is being proposed as an impulse-control disorder for ICD-11.3 However, we believe the logic applied by Saunders and colleagues1 might also apply to compulsive sexual behaviour disorder. 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.2 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.4 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.5 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.2 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.3
There are both pros and cons regarding the classification of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder as an impulse-control disorder. On one hand, inclusion of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder in ICD-11 could improve consistency in diagnosis, treatment, and study of individuals with this disorder. On the other hand, classification of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder as an impulse-control disorder as opposed to an addictive disorder might negatively influence treatment and study by limiting treatment availability, treatment training, and research efforts. 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.3 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.
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5). American Psychiatric Association Publishing, Arlington; 2013. Google Scholar
Marc Potenza and colleagues1 advocated classifying “excessive sexual behaviour” as an addictive disorder in ICD-11. Sex has components of liking and wanting that share neural systems with many other motivated behaviours.2However, experimental studies do not support key elements of addiction such as escalation of use, difficulty regulating urges, negative effects, reward deficiency syndrome, withdrawal syndrome with cessation, tolerance, or enhanced late positive potentials. A key neurobiological feature of addiction is the increased responsiveness of glutamate neurons that synapse on the nucleus accumbens. These changes might affect long-term sensitisation of the mesocorticolimbic dopamine pathway, as manifested by a range of symptoms including cue-induced craving and compulsive drug use. 3To date, research on the effects of sex on glutamate function and its modulation of dopamine pathways is scarce.
Sex is a primary reward, with unique peripheral representation. Engagement in sex is positively associated with health and life satisfaction. Sex does not allow for supraphysiological stimulation. Research in this area has yet to investigate actual partnered sexual behaviours. Experimental work has been limited to sexual cues, or secondary rewards, using images. More research is needed, but data concerning frequent or excessive sex do not support its inclusion as an addiction. Also, data are not sufficient to differentiate between compulsive and impulsive models. Many other approaches exist, including well-supported non-pathological models.4 Potenza and colleagues5also stated that addiction criteria were not met for sexual behaviours: we agree with this earlier conclusion.
References:
Is excessive sexual behaviour an addictive disorder? Lancet Psychiatry.2017; 4: 663-664PubMed
Sex for fun: a synthesis of human and animal neurobiology. Nat Rev Urol.2012; 9: 486-498PubMed
Drug addiction as a pathology of staged neuroplasticity. Neuropsychopharmacology.2008; 33: 166-180PubMed
Hypersexuality: a critical review and introduction to the “sexhavior cycle”. Arch Sex Behav.2017; DOI:10.1007/s10508-017-0991-8<
Should compulsive sexual behavior be considered an addiction? Addiction.2016; 111: 2097-2106PubMed
Debunking the solitary sentence containing everything Prause et al. 2017 had to offer
Prause’s Lancet effort contains only a single sentence (and no supporting citations) to counter the Potenza et al. commentary. (In support of Potenza et al., consider these 20 commentaries/reviews asserting that CSBD should be categorized under the “addictive behaviors” category in WHO’s new ICD-11.) Prause et al. provides seven so-called “key elements of addiction” its authors claim studies have yet to find in porn or sex addicts:
PRAUSE ET AL: However, experimental studies do not support key elements of addiction such as escalation of use, difficulty regulating urges, negative effects, reward deficiency syndrome, withdrawal syndrome with cessation, tolerance, or enhanced late positive potentials.
Reality check:
Three of Prause’s seven items are not really accepted as “key elements of addiction”: Reward deficiency syndrome, enhanced late positive potentials, and withdrawal. In fact, however, studies have reported both withdrawal and reward deficiency syndrome in porn user and sex addicts. Her other purported key element of addiction (“enhanced late positive potentials”) has only been assessed in a widely criticized Nicole Prause EEG study. Seven peer-reviewed papers agree that Prause’s finding of lower EEG readings (lower late positive potentials) actually means that frequent porn users were bored by vanilla porn (an indication of possible addiction). In fact, these formal analyses of Prause’s paper agree that she found desensitization/habituation in frequent porn users (consistent with the addiction model): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Thus, contrary to Prause’s claims, six of the seven so-called “elements of addiction” have been identified in studies on porn users and/or sex addicts – and the seventh rests solely on her own dubious claim (that it is “key”) and her own disputed analysis.
Readers need to ask themselves why Prause et al. would attempt to mislead them.
Before we provide empirical support for the “key elements of addiction” that Prause et al. claimed were absent, let’s briefly examine what addiction experts believe are actually the key elements of addiction:
Studies reporting sensitization 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. Assessed through cue-reactivity brain studies or strong cravings to use.
Studies reporting desensitization or habituation in porn users/sex addicts: 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Manifests as decreased reward sensitivity (less pleasure), habituation to porn (lower brain activation), tolerance (escalation to new genres).
Studies reporting poorer executive functioning (hypofrontality) or altered prefrontal activity in porn users/sex addicts: 1,2, 3,4,5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Manifests as weakened willpower, cravings, inability to control use, poor decision making.
Studies indicating a dysfunctional stress system in porn users/sex addicts: 1, 2, 3. Manifests as even minor stress leading to cravings and relapse because it activates powerful sensitized pathways. In addition, quitting an addiction activates the brain’s stress systems leading to many of the withdrawal symptoms common to all addictions, such as anxiety, irritability and mood swings.
As we can see Prause et al., 2017, cherry-picked and misrepresented key elements of addiction to produce a “official” letter to link to on social media and to email journalists.
Empirical support for the “key elements of addiction” that Prause et al. claimed were absent
In this section we provide empirical support for the “key elements of addiction” that Prause falsely asserted were absent.
PRAUSE ET AL: However, experimental studies do not support key elements of addiction such as escalation of use, difficulty regulating urges, negative effects, reward deficiency syndrome, withdrawal syndrome with cessation, tolerance, or enhanced late positive potentials.
1) “escalation of use” and “tolerance”
Prause et al. incorrectly lists “tolerance” and “escalation of use” as separate elements of addiction. Tolerance, which is the need for greater stimulation in order to achieve the same level of arousal is also called habituation (less and less response to a drug or a stimulus). With drug abusers tolerance/habituation manifests as needing higher doses to achieve the same high. This is escalation of use. With porn users, tolerance/habituation leads to boredom with current genre or type of porn: greater stimulation is often achieved by escalating to new or more extreme genres of porn.
Forty-nine percent mentioned at least sometimes searching for sexual content or being involved in OSAs that were not previously interesting to them or that they considered disgusting.
“The Dual Control Model: The Role Of Sexual Inhibition & Excitation In Sexual Arousal And Behavior,” 2007. Indiana University Press, Editor: Erick Janssen, pp.197-222. In an experiment employing video porn (of the type used in previous experiments), 50% of the young men couldn’t become aroused or achieve erections with porn (average age was 29). The shocked researchers discovered that the men’s erectile dysfunction was,
related to high levels of exposure to and experience with sexually explicit materials.
The men experiencing erectile dysfunction had spent a considerable amount of time in bars and bathhouses where porn was “omnipresent,” and “continuously playing.” The researchers stated:
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.
How about a brain scan study? “Brain Structure and Functional Connectivity Associated With Pornography Consumption: The Brain on Porn” (Kühn & Gallinat, 2014). This Max Planck Institute fMRI study found less grey matter in the reward system (dorsal striatum) correlating with the amount of porn consumed. It also found that more porn use correlated with less reward circuit activation while briefly viewing sexual photos. Researchers hypothesized that their findings indicated desensitization, and possibly tolerance, which is the need for greater stimulation to achieve the same level of arousal. Lead author Simone Kühn said the following about her study:
This could mean that regular consumption of pornography dulls the reward system. … We therefore assume that subjects with high pornography consumption require ever stronger stimuli to reach the same reward level …. This is consistent with the findings on the functional connectivity of the striatum to other brain areas: high pornography consumption was found to be associated with diminished communication between the reward area and the prefrontal cortex.
Online explicit stimuli are vast and expanding, and this feature may promote escalation of use in some individuals. For instance, healthy males viewing repeatedly the same explicit film have been found to habituate to the stimulus and find the explicit stimulus as progressively less sexually arousing, less appetitive and less absorbing (Koukounas and Over, 2000). … We show experimentally what is observed clinically that Compulsive Sexual Behavior is characterized by novelty-seeking, conditioning and habituation to sexual stimuli in males.
This same habituation effect occurs in healthy males who are repeatedly shown the same porn video. But when they then view a new video, the level of interest and arousal goes back to the original level. This implies that, to prevent habituation, the sex addict would need to seek out a constant supply of new images. In other words, habituation could drive the search for novel images.
“Our findings are particularly relevant in the context of online pornography,” adds Dr Voon. “It’s not clear what triggers sex addiction in the first place and it is likely that some people are more pre-disposed to the addiction than others, but the seemingly endless supply of novel sexual images available online helps feed their addiction, making it more and more difficult to escape.”
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. The Prause et al. findings also align with Banca et al. 2015, which reported that lower EEG readings meant that subjects were paying less attention to the pictures than controls. Put simply, frequent porn users were desensitized to static images of vanilla porn. They were bored (habituated or desensitized). See this extensive YBOP critique. Eight peer-reviewed papers agree that Prause et al. 2015 actually found desensitization/habituation in frequent porn users (consistent with addiction): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
A study that reported both tolerance and withdrawal (two items Prause’s Lancet piece falsely claimed that no study had assessed): “The Development of the Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale (PPCS)” (2017) – This paper developed and tested a problematic porn use questionnaire that was modeled after substance addiction questionnaires. This 18-item questionnaire assessed tolerance and withdrawal with the following 6 questions:
———-
Each question was scored from one to seven on a Likert scale: 1- Never, 2- Rarely, 3- Occasionally, 4- Sometimes, 5- Often, 6- Very Often, 7- All the Time. The graph below grouped porn users into 3 categories based on their total scores: “Nonproblematic,” “Low risk,” and “At risk.” Results below show that many porn users experience both tolerance and withdrawal
Put simply, this study actually asked about escalation (tolerance) and withdrawal – and both are reported by some porn users.
I could provide 20 more studies reporting or suggesting habituation to “regular porn” along with escalation into more extreme and unusual genres, but Prause et al. is already exposed for what it is – propaganda masquerading as a scholarly letter to the editor
2) “negative effects”
Since hundreds of studies have linked porn/sex addiction and porn use to myriad negative effects, Prause’s Lancet claim that no study has reported negative effects exposes the letter as a scam.
This preposterous claim is debunked by the hundreds of studies examining assessing compulsive sexual behaviour, most of which employed one or more of the following porn/sex addiction instruments. The core element of an addiction is “continued use despite severe negative consequences.” That’s why following questionnaires all asked about negative effects related to CSB (links are to Google scholar studies):
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.
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.
3) “difficulty regulating urges”
The claim that no study has assessed “difficultly regulating urges” is as untrue as the preceding claim concerning negative effects. The many porn and sex addiction questionnaires listed under #2 assessed whether subjects had trouble controlling their porn use or sexual behaviors. Once again, “inability to control use, despite negative consequences” is a hallmark of an addiction process – and is assessed by standard questionnaires. We provide a few examples from the above list of porn/sex addiction instruments.
No need to fill up this section with CSB questionnaires. You get the idea – Prause et al’s claim that no study has ever assessed “inability to control use” is nonsense and an affront to the Lancet journal that published their letter.
4) “reward deficiency syndrome”
As mentioned above “Reward Deficiency Syndrome” (RDS) is not a universally agreed upon element of addiction. Prause et al. tossed RDS into their list to give the false impression that it was a key element addiction that had yet to be assessed. Although there is not a scholarly consensus about RDS, it has been assessed (more below).
As conceived by researcher Kenneth Blum, “Reward Deficiency Syndrome” is described as genetically-induced low dopamine signalling, probably arising from a deficiency in dopamine receptors. According to Blum’s hypothesis, RDS manifests as feeling less pleasure (anhedonia) than people with so-called normal dopamine functioning. Moreover, those with RDS with be more likely compensate for low dopamine (less pleasure) by over-consuming natural rewards (junk food, gambling sex) and addictive drugs, and thus run a higher chance of becoming addicts.
Despite its appeal, there are some serious problems with the RDS model. I’ll name just two. We know from dozens of studies that drug or alcohol use itself leads to a reduction in dopamine receptor density, or at least dopamine receptor activation, because those receptors tend to burn out or become desensitized when we keep bombarding them with fun stuff.
In other words, RDS isn’t always genetic, as it can be caused by the addiction process itself. When addiction causes lower dopamine signaling, or a decline in reward sensitivity, its called desensitization. As explained earlier, desensitization leads to tolerance, which is a need for greater an greater stimulation to achieve the same high or arousal state. Contrary to Prause’s vague assertions about RDS, six neuroscience-based studies have reported findings consistent with desensitization or habituation: 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6. If we also consider the many habituation and escalation studies listed above, 30 more arguably fall under “desensitization” or “decreased reward sensitivity.”.
The prevailing theory of addiction – the incentive-sensitization model and the evidence supporting it – were completely ignored by Prause et al. The neurological changes caused by sensitization manifest as increased “wanting” or craving while liking or pleasure diminishes. As Potenza et al pointed out, many CSB studies have reported findings consistent with the incentive sensitization model:
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.
All the above can be considered support for the incentive-sensitization model of addiction. The CSB studies aligning with this model: 1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22.
5) “withdrawal syndrome with cessation”
The fact is, withdrawal symptoms are not required to diagnose an addiction. First, you will find the language “neither tolerance nor withdrawal is necessary or sufficient for a diagnosis…” in both the DSM-IV-TR and DSM-5. Second, the oft-repeated sexology claim that “real” addictions cause severe, life-threatening withdrawal symptoms mistakenly conflates physiological dependence with addiction-related brain changes. An excerpt from this 2015 review of literature provides a technical explanation (Neuroscience of Internet Pornography Addiction: A Review and Update):
A key point of this stage is that withdrawal is not about the physiological effects from a specific substance. Rather, this model measures withdrawal via a negative affect resulting from the above process. Aversive emotions such as anxiety, depression, dysphoria, and irritability are indicators of withdrawal in this model of addiction [43,45]. Researchers opposed to the idea of behaviors being addictive often overlook or misunderstand this critical distinction, confusing withdrawal with detoxification [46,47].
In claiming that withdrawal symptoms must be present to diagnosis an addiction Prause et al. makes the rookie mistake of confusing physical dependency with addiction. These terms are not synonymous (Pfaus made this same error in a 2016 article that YBOP critiqued: YBOP response to Jim Pfaus’s “Trust a scientist: sex addiction is a myth” January, 2016)
That said, internet porn research and numerous self-reports demonstrate that some porn users experience withdrawal and/or tolerance – which are also often characteristic of physical dependency. In fact, ex-porn users regularly report surprisingly severe withdrawal symptoms, which are reminiscent of drug withdrawals: insomnia, anxiety, irritability, mood swings, headaches, restlessness, poor concentration, fatigue, depression, and social paralysis, as well as the sudden loss of libido that guys call the ‘flatline’ (apparently unique to porn withdrawal). Another sign of physical dependency reported by porn users is inability to get an erection or to have an orgasm without using porn.
As for studies, only three have directly asked porn users/sex addicts about withdrawal symptoms. All 3 reported withdrawal symptoms: 1, 2, 3. Two of the studies are described below.
First let’s reconsider the study described in the tolerance/escalation section above, the goal of which was to develop and test a problematic porn use questionnaire. Note that substantial evidence of both “tolerance” and “withdrawal” was found in at-risk users and low-risk users.
The reason Prause’s Lancet letter listed “enhanced late positive potentials” is because she and her team had found lower late positive potentials in her 2015 study – Prause et al., 2015.
EEGs measure electrical activity, or brain waves, on the scalp. “Enhanced late positive potentials” are EEG readings measured immediately after an image seen by the subject. This is but one of many spikes in electrical activity assessed by an EEG, and very much up for interpretation.
What is agreed upon is that lower EEG readings in Prause’s frequent porn users meant they paid less attention to the photos of vanilla porn than the subjects who used less porn. The former were simply bored. Undeterred, Prause boldly claimed “This pattern appears different from substance addiction models.”
But Prause’s finding of lower brain activation for the more frequent porn users actually aligns with the addiction model: it indicates desensitization (habituation) and tolerance, which is the need for greater stimulation to achieve arousal. Seven peer-reviewed papers agree that Prause et al., 2015 actually found desensitization/habituation (a sign of addiction):
Even if Prause were correct that her subjects had less “cue-reactivity,” rather than habituation, she conveniently ignores the gaping hole in her “falsification” assertion: 21 other neurological studies have reported cue-reactivity or cravings (incentive sensitization) in compulsive porn users: 1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. Scientific consensus doesn’t rest on someone’s claims about a lone anomalous study hampered by serious methodological flaws; scientific consensus rests on the preponderance of evidence (unless you are agenda-driven).
Responding to the Prause et al., 2017 “glutamate transmission” red herring
PRAUSE ET AL: A key neurobiological feature of addiction is the increased responsiveness of glutamate neurons that synapse on the nucleus accumbens. These changes might affect long-term sensitisation of the mesocorticolimbic dopamine pathway, as manifested by a range of symptoms including cue-induced craving and compulsive drug use. 3 To date, research on the effects of sex on glutamate function and its modulation of dopamine pathways is scarce.
Why was this included in the Prause letter? Decades of animal research have molded the prevailing theory of addiction: the incentive-sensitization model of addiction. The central brain change behind the theory is as described above – long-term sensitization of the mesocorticolimbic dopamine via glutamate neurons. That’s quite a mouthful, but YBOP wrote a relatively simple article about it in 2011 (with a few pictures): Why Do I Find Porn More Exciting Than A Partner? (2011).
In simple terms, thoughts, feelings, and memories from all over the brain are sent to the brain’s reward system via glutamate-releasing pathways. With addiction, these glutamate pathways become super-powerful, or sensitized. These sensitized pathways can be thought of as Pavlovian conditioning on turbos. When activated by thoughts or triggers, sensitized pathways blast the reward circuit, firing up hard-to-ignore cravings.
But here’s the deal. There are already 21 neuroscience-based studies reporting brain activation patterns and cue-induced cravings definitively demonstrating sensitization in CSB subjects and porn users: 1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. We don’t need glutamate studies, which have only been recently done in human subjects, and are very expensive and challenging to interpret.
Responding to Prause et al., 2017 “supraphysiological stimulation” red herring
PRAUSE ET AL: Sex is a primary reward, with unique peripheral representation. Engagement in sex is positively associated with health and life satisfaction. Sex does not allow for supraphysiological stimulation.
Prause presents us with two red herrings having nothing to do with the debate surrounding compulsive sexual behavior disorder.
Red herring #1: “Engagement in sex is positively associated with health and life satisfaction“.
While engaging in sexual intercourse is often correlated with better health indices, this has nothing to with porn use, porn addiction, sex addiction, or engaging in other types of sexual activities (the term “sex” is vague, non-scientific, and shouldn’t be used as a catch-all in an academic journal).
First, many of the so-called health benefits claimed to be associated with orgasm, masturbation or “sex” are in fact associated with close contact with another human being, not necessarily with orgasm, and not with masturbation. More specifically, claimed correlations between a few isolated health indicators sexual intercourse are probably just correlations arising from healthier populations who naturally engage in more sex and masturbation. They are not causal.
Specifically, this review of literature (The Relative Health Benefits of Different Sexual Activities, 2010) found that sexual intercourse was related to positive effects, while masturbation was not. In some cases masturbation was negatively related to health benefits – meaning that more masturbation correlated with poorer health indicators. The conclusion of the review:
“Based upon a broad range of methods, samples, and measures, the research findings are remarkably consistent in demonstrating that one sexual activity (Penile-Vaginal Intercourse and the orgasmic response to it) is associated with, and in some cases, causes processes associated with better psychological and physical functioning.”
“Other sexual behaviors (including when Penile-Vaginal Intercourse is impaired, as with condoms or distraction away from the penile–vaginal sensations) are unassociated, or in some cases (such as masturbation and anal intercourse) inversely associated with better psychological and physical functioning.”
“Sexual medicine, sex education, sex therapy, and sex research should disseminate details of the health benefits of specifically Penile-Vaginal Intercourse, and also become much more specific in their respective assessment and intervention practices.”
Red herring #2: “Sex does not allow for supraphysiological stimulation“.
Only a handful of people would know that Prause et al. is attempting to discredit the concept of internet pornography as a supernormal stimulus. As its co-authors misuse the term “supraphysiological stimulation,” it’s clear that they have no idea what Nobel laureate Nikolaas Tinbergen meant when he coined the term ‘supernormal stimulus’ (or supranormal).
First, supraphysiological levels of neurotransmitters, such as dopamine or endogenous opioids, are not required for chronic use to induce addiction-related brain changes. For example, the two most addictive drugs (meaning those which hook the greatest percentage of users) – nicotine and opiates – increase reward center dopamine by 200%. This is same levels of dopamine seen in sexual arousal (sex and orgasm produce the highest levels of dopamine and endogenous opioids naturally available).
Moreover, 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. The fact that meth, cocaine, and heroin turn on the same nerve cells that make sexual stimulation so compelling helps explain why they can be so addictive.
Finally we have the obvious: both the DSM5 and the ICD-11 recognize behavioral addictions. The DSM5 (2013) contains a diagnosis for gambling addiction, while the new ICD-11 (2018) has diagnoses for gambling addiction as well as video-game addiction, and contains a diagnosis suitable for porn addiction or sex addiction: “Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder.”
We now have access to a glut of larger-than-life temptations, from candy to pornography to atomic bombs, which cater to outmoded but persistent instinctive drives with dangerous results. In the 1930s Dutch Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen found that birds that lay small, pale blue eggs speckled with grey preferred to sit on giant, bright blue plaster dummies with black polka dots. A male silver washed fritillary butterfly was more sexually aroused by a butterfly-sized rotating cylinder with horizontal brown stripes than it is by a real, live female of its own kind. Mother birds preferred to try feeding a fake baby bird beak held on a stick by Tinbergen’s students if the dummy beak was wider and redder than a real chick’s. Male stickleback fish ignored a real male to fight a dummy if its underside was brighter red than any natural fish. Tinbergen coined the term “supernormal stimuli” to describe these imitations, which appeal to primitive instincts and, oddly, exert a stronger attraction than real things. Animals encounter supernormal stimuli mostly when experimenters build them. We humans can produce our own: super sugary drinks, French fries, huge-eyed stuffed animals, diatribes about menacing enemies.
A supernormal stimulus is not defined as supra-physiological response. Rather, it is based upon a comparison between what an animal evolved to find compelling and an exaggerated (perhaps synthetic) version of that same compelling stimulus. Female birds, for example, struggled to sit on Tinbergen’s larger-than life, vividly spotted plaster eggs while their own pale, dappled eggs perished untended.
Internet porn is considered a supernormal stimulus because it provides endless sexual novelty. With internet porn, it’s not just the unending sexual novelty that buzzes our reward system. The reward system fires up for other emotions and stimuli too, all of which often feature prominently in viewers:
Anything that violates expectations – shock, surprise, or more than we could have imagined
Erotic words and pictures have been around a long time. So has the neurochemical rush from novel mates. Yet the novelty of a once-a-month Playboy evaporates as soon as you turn the pages. Would anyone call Playboy or softcore videos “shocking” or “anxiety-producing?” Would either violate the expectations of a computer-literate boy over the age of 12? Neither compares with the “searching and seeking” of a multiple-tab Google porn prowl. What makes internet porn unique is that you can keep your dopamine (and sexual arousal) jacked up with the click of a mouse or tap on a screen.
Many of these same emotional states (anxiety, shame, shock, surprise) not only elevate dopamine, but each can also boost stress hormones and neurotransmitters (norepinephrine, epinephrine, cortisol). These stress neurochemicals increase excitement while amplifying dopamine’s already powerful effects. Other qualities that set internet porn apart from other potentially addictive substances and behaviors:
To increase sexual arousal (and raise declining dopamine) one can instantly switch genres during a masturbation session. Couldn’t do that before 2006 and the arrival of streaming tube sites.
Unlike photos of naked people, videos replace your imagination, and may shape your sexual tastes, behavior, or trajectory (especially so for adolescents).
Porn is stored in your brain, which allows you to recall it anytime you need a “hit.”
Unlike food and drugs, for which there is a limit to consumption, there are no physical limitations to internet porn consumption. The brain’s natural satiation mechanisms are not activated, unless one climaxes. Even then, the user can click to something more exciting to become aroused again.
With food and drugs one can only escalate (a marker of an addiction process) by consuming more. With internet porn one can escalate both with more novel “partners” and by viewing new and unusual genres. It’s quite common for a porn user to move to evermore extreme porn. A user can also escalate by viewing compilation videos or by using VR porn.
Highly palatable foods (concentrated sugars/fats/salt), video games, and internet porn are recognized as supernormal stimuli. Here are a few peer-reviewed papers exploring internet applications (porn, video games, Facebook) as supernormal stimuli:
Some internet activities, because of their power to deliver unending stimulation (and activation of the reward system), are thought to constitute supernormal stimuli [24], which helps to explain why users whose brains manifest addiction-related changes get caught in their pathological pursuit. Nobel Prize winning scientist Nikolaas Tinbergen [25] posited the idea of “supernormal stimuli,” a phenomenon wherein artificial stimuli can be created that will override an evolutionarily developed genetic response. To illustrate this phenomenon, Tinbergen created artificial bird eggs that were larger and more colorful than actual bird eggs. Surprisingly, the mother birds chose to sit on the more vibrant artificial eggs and abandon their own naturally laid eggs. Similarly, Tinbergen created artificial butterflies with larger and more colorful wings, and male butterflies repeatedly tried to mate with these artificial butterflies in lieu of actual female butterflies. Evolutionary Psychologist Dierdre Barrett took up this concept in her recent book Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose [26]. “Animals encounter supernormal stimuli mostly when experimenters build them. We humans can produce our own.” [4] (p. 4). Barrett’s examples range from candy to pornography and highly salted or unnaturally sweetened junk food to highly engaging interactive video game playing. In short, generalized internet chronic overuse is highly stimulating. It recruits our natural reward system, but potentially activates it at higher levels than the levels of activation our ancestors typically encountered as our brains evolved, making it liable to switch into an addictive mode [27].
Supernormal (SN) stimuli are artificial products that activate reward pathways and approach behavior more so than naturally occurring stimuli for which these systems were intended. Many modern consumer products (e.g., snack foods, alcohol, and pornography) appear to incorporate SN features, leading to excessive consumption, in preference to naturally occurring alternatives. No measure currently exists for the self-report assessment of individual differences or changes in susceptibility to such stimuli. Therefore, an anticipatory pleasure scale was modified to include items that represented both SN and natural (N) classes of rewarding stimuli. Exploratory factor analysis yielded a two-factor solution, and as predicted, N and SN items reliably loaded on separate dimensions. Internal reliability for the two scales was high, ρ =.93 and ρ =.90, respectively. The two-dimensional measure was evaluated via regression using the N and SN scale means as predictors and self-reports of daily consumption of 21 products with SN features as outcomes. As expected, SN pleasure ratings were related to higher SN product consumption, while N pleasure ratings had either negative or neutral associations to consumption of these products. We conclude that the resulting two-dimensional measure is a potentially reliable and valid self-report measure of differential preference for SN stimuli. While further evaluation is needed (e.g., using experimental measures), the proposed scale may play a useful role in the study of both trait- and state-based variation in human susceptibility to SN stimuli.
Processed foods, psychoactive substances, some retail goods, and various social media and gaming products are readily overconsumed, presenting numerous population health challenges (Roberts, van Vught, & Dunbar, 2012). Evolutionary psychology provides a persuasive explanation of excessive consumption. Animals, including humans, tend to approach (i.e., gather, acquire, and consume) stimuli that provide the highest relative reward for their efforts, thereby optimizing their utility (Chakravarthy & Booth, 2004; Kacelnik & Bateson, 1996). Neurological reward mechanisms evolved to promote adaptive behavior by reinforcing stimuli that send signals of promoting fitness, such as providing nutrients or reproductive opportunities. Tinbergen (1948) coined the term “Supernormal Stimulus” upon finding that animals tend to exhibit heightened responses to exaggerated versions of natural stimuli. This “selection asymmetry” (Staddon, 1975; Ward, 2013) is not maladaptive in natural environments in which exaggerated versions of the stimulus are rare—but presents problems when artificial and exaggerated alternatives exist. For example, the newly hatched herring gull prefers to peck at a fabricated thin red rod with white bands at its tip, rather than its mother’s naturally red spotted thin beak (Tinbergen & Perdeck, 1951). In the context of resource selection, the outcome is a behavioral heuristic of “get all you can”: an adaptive strategy in natural environments where resource supply is scarce or unreliable. In the modern human environment, many highly rewarding experiences exist in the form of artificial consumer products that have been designed or refined to be supernormal. That is, they stimulate an evolved reward system to a degree not found in natural stimuli (Barrett, 2010). For example, psychoactive substances (Nesse & Berridge, 1997), commercial fast-food products (Barrett, 2007), gambling products (Rockloff, 2014), television shows (Barrett, 2010; Derrick, Gabriel, & Hugenberg, 2009), digital social networking and the Internet (Rocci, 2013; Ward, 2013), and various retail products, such as expensive cars (Erk, Spitzer, Wunderlich, Galley, & Walter, 2002), high-heeled shoes (Morris, White, Morrison, & Fisher, 2013), cosmetics (Etcoff, Stock, Haley, Vickery, & House, 2011), and children’s toys (Morris, Reddy, & Bunting, 1995) have all been discussed as forms of modern day supernormal stimuli. For some of these stimuli, neurological evidence has shown that they tend to activate dopamine pathways intensely, hijacking the reward response designed for natural rewards, thereby promoting excess consumption and in some cases, addiction (Barrett, 2010; Blumenthal & Gold, 2010; Wang et al., 2001).
To varying degrees, supernormal stimuli tend to be unhealthy. The ready availability of high-calorie takeaway meals and snacks, the toxicity of alcohol and other substances, the sedentary activity involved in watching television, using digital media and gaming products, and the expense of retail items or gambling, all serve to provide an environment that fosters unhealthy behavioral choices, leading to harms (Barrett, 2007, 2010; Birch, 1999; Hantula, 2003; Ward, 2013). This makes the study of susceptibility of modern humans to supernormal stimuli of practical significance. In the current report, we use the term supernormal stimuli to refer to modern human products and experiences that are characterized by asymmetric selectivity (uncontrolled approach to more intense variants) and being made artificially abundant in the modern world. These products are often processed, refined, or synthesized consumer goods including snack foods or substances. Less obvious examples include messages received via social media. Although at times less stimulating than a face-to-face conversation, this communication method provides prolonged enhanced visual, speed, and delivery characteristics. Similarly, most modern day clothing and other retail products exhibit similar enhanced signifiers of rarity or desirability, with attendant implications for sexual or social status. Consumption or acquisition of these products is theorized to provide immediate reward due to being interpreted as fitness enhancing.
It has been suggested a preference for supernormal reward could be the result of differences in dopamine functioning. Dopamine deficiency has been found to be related to various forms of excess consumption including alcohol abuse, binge eating, problem gambling, and Internet addiction (Bergh, Eklund, Södersten, & Nordin, 1997; Blum, Cull, Braverman, & Comings, 1996; Johnson & Kenny, 2010; Kim et al., 2011). The concept of supernormal susceptibility is consistent with an interpretation in terms of individual variability in the dopamine functioning. Dopaminergic pathways, evolved to prioritize resource acquisition and consumption in a resource-scarce environment, are likely to be particularly sensitive to psychoactive substances, energy-dense food, and other modern day consumer products exhibiting exaggerated reward properties (Barrett, 2010; Nesse & Berridge, 1997; Wang et al., 2001). If this is the case, then the two-dimensional NPS/SNPS described here would be expected to discriminate individuals with dopamine dysfunction. Future research might profitably employ neurophysiological techniques in conjunction with self-report measures, in order to confirm the correspondences between these two levels of description.
Supernormal experiences are inherently unhealthy and amenable to excess consumption due to their processed characteristics (e.g., snacks and take away foods) and encouraging prolonged sedentary behavior (e.g., social networking and gaming). Therefore, the ability to identify individuals who prefer these types of reward provides a valuable contribution to those researching, treating, and preventing population health problems caused by over consumption.
Addiction has been a divisive term when applied to various compulsive sexual behaviors (CSBs), including obsessive use of pornography. Despite a growing acceptance of the existence of natural or process addictions based on an increased understanding of the function of the mesolimbic dopaminergic reward systems, there has been a reticence to label CSBs as potentially addictive. While pathological gambling (PG) and obesity have received greater attention in functional and behavioral studies, evidence increasingly supports the description of CSBs as an addiction. This evidence is multifaceted and is based on an evolving understanding of the role of the neuronal receptor in addiction-related neuroplasticity, supported by the historical behavioral perspective. This addictive effect may be amplified by the accelerated novelty and the ‘supranormal stimulus’ (a phrase coined by Nikolaas Tinbergen) factor afforded by Internet pornography….
It is surprising that food addiction would not be included as a behavioral addiction, despite studies demonstrating dopaminergic receptor downregulation in obesity (Wang et al., 2001), with reversibility seen with dieting and normalization of body mass index (BMI) (Steele et al., 2010). The concept of a ‘supranormal stimulus’, invoking Nikolaas Tinbergen’s term (Tinbergen, 1951), has recently been described in the context of intense sweetness surpassing cocaine reward, which also supports the premise of food addiction (Lenoir, Serre, Laurine, & Ahmed, 2007). Tinbergen originally found that birds, butterflies, and other animals could be duped into preferring artificial substitutes designed specifically to appear more attractive than the animal’s normal eggs and mates. There is, of course, a lack of comparable functional and behavioral work in the study of human sexual addiction, as compared to gambling and food addictions, but it can be argued that each of these behaviors can involve supranormal stimuli. Deirdre Barrett (2010) has included pornography as an example of a supranormal stimulus…..
Pornography is a perfect laboratory for this kind of novel learning fused with a powerful pleasure incentive drive. The focused searching and clicking, looking for the perfect masturbatory subject, is an exercise in neuroplastic learning. Indeed, it is illustrative of Tinbergen’s concept of the ‘supranormal stimulus’ (Tinbergen, 1951), with plastic surgery–enhanced breasts presented in limitless novelty in humans serving the same purpose as Tinbergen’s and Magnus’s artificially enhanced female butterfly models; the males of each species prefer the artificial to the naturally evolved (Magnus, 1958; Tinbergen, 1951). In this sense, the enhanced novelty provides, metaphorically speaking, a pheromone-like effect in human males, like moths, which is ‘inhibiting orientation’ and ‘disrupting pre-mating communication between the sexes by permeating the atmosphere’ (Gaston, Shorey, & Saario, 1967)…..
Even public opinion seems to be trying to describe this biologic phenomenon, as in this statement from Naomi Wolf; ‘For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today real naked women are just bad porn’ (Wolf, 2003). Just as Tinbergen’s and Magnus’s ‘butterfly porn’ successfully competed for male attention at the expense of real females (Magnus, 1958; Tinbergen, 1951), we see this same process occurring in humans.
Arguably, the most important development in the field of problematic sexual behavior is the way in which the Internet is influencing and facilitating compulsive sexual behavior [73]. Unlimited high-definition sexual videos streaming via “tube sites” are now free and widely accessible, 24 h a day via computers, tablets and smartphones, and it has been suggested that Internet pornography constitutes a supernormal stimulus, an exaggerated imitation of something our brains evolved to pursue because of its evolutionary salience [74,75]. Sexually explicit material has been around for a long time, but (1) video pornography is significantly more sexually arousing than other forms of pornography [76,77] or fantasy [78]; (2) novel sexual visuals have been shown to trigger greater arousal, faster ejaculation, and more semen and erection activity compared with familiar material, perhaps because attention to potential novel mates and arousal served reproductive fitness [75,79,80,81,82,83,84]; and (3) the ability to self-select material with ease makes Internet pornography more arousing than pre-selected collections [79]. A pornography user can maintain or heighten sexual arousal by instantly clicking to a novel scene, new video or never encountered genre. A 2015 study assessing Internet pornography’s effects on delay discounting (choosing immediate gratification over delayed rewards of greater value) states, “The constant novelty and primacy of sexual stimuli as particularly strong natural rewards make internet pornography a unique activator of the brain’s reward system. … It is therefore important to treat pornography as a unique stimulus in reward, impulsivity, and addiction studies” [75] (pp. 1, 10).
Novelty registers as salient, enhances reward value, and has lasting effects on motivation, learning and memory [85]. Like sexual motivation and the rewarding properties of sexual interaction, novelty is compelling because it triggers bursts of dopamine in regions of the brain strongly associated with reward and goal-directed behavior [66]. While compulsive Internet pornography users show stronger preference for novel sexual images than healthy controls, their dACC (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) also shows more rapid habituation to images than healthy controls [86], fueling the search for more novel sexual images. As co-author Voon explained about her team’s 2015 study on novelty and habituation in compulsive Internet pornography users, “The seemingly endless supply of novel sexual images available online [can feed an] addiction, making it more and more difficult to escape” [87]. Mesolimbic dopamine activity can also be enhanced by additional properties often associated with Internet pornography use such as, violation of expectations, anticipation of reward, and the act of seeking/surfing (as for Internet pornography) [88,89,90,91,92,93]. Anxiety, which has been shown to increase sexual arousal [89,94], may also accompany Internet pornography use. In short, Internet pornography offers all of these qualities, which register as salient, stimulate dopamine bursts, and enhance sexual arousal.
Prause et al., 2017 doesn’t understand the addiction model
PRAUSE ET AL: Also, data are not sufficient to differentiate between compulsive and impulsive models.
Another red herring. Unlike the authors of Potenza et al., the authors of Prause et al., are not addiction experts – and it shows. Studies repeatedly report that addiction features elements of both impulsivity and compulsivity. (A Google Scholar search for addiction + impulsivity + compulsivity returns 22,000 citations.) Here are simple definitions of impulsivity and compulsivity:
Impulsivity: Acting quickly and without adequate thought or planning in response to internal or external stimuli. A predisposition to accept smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed gratification and an inability to stop a behavior toward gratification once it’s set in motion.
Compulsivity: Refers to repetitive behaviors that are performed according to certain rules or in a stereotypical fashion. These behaviors persevere even in the face of adverse consequences.
The use of “compulsive” in the new ICD-11 diagnosis isn’t meant to denote the neurological underpinnings of Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder: “continued repetitive sexual behaviour despite adverse consequences.” Instead “compulsive,” as used in the ICD-11, is a descriptive term that has been in use for years, and is often employed interchangeably with “addiction.” (For example a Google scholar search for compulsion + addiction returns 130,000 citations.)
Thus, whatever you or your healthcare giver want to call it – “hypersexuality,” “porn addiction,” “sex addiction,” “out-of-control sexual behavior,” “cybersex addiction” – if the behaviors fall within the “Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder” description, the condition can be diagnosed using the ICD-11 CSBD diagnosis.
This page was 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. User friendly versions of this overlong page:
Since this page was first created Prause has targeted others, 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 incidents are in the “OTHERS” sections. Several additional incidents have occurred that we are not at liberty to divulge – as Prause’s victims fear further retribution. This page is arranged roughly in chronological order.
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 this page. No one on this list has harassed Nicole Prause. Her fabricated claims about being a victim of “stalking” or misogyny from “anti-porn activists” lack one iota of documentation. All the evidence she provides is self-generated: a single info-graphic, a few emails from her to others describing harassment, and five 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 bogus complaints so she can then go on to claim her targets are all “under investigation.” See: PDF Documenting Nicole Prause’s Malicious Reporting and Malicious Use of Process.
Update (January, 2020): Alex Rhodes filed an amended complaint against Prause which also names the RealYBOP twitter account (@BrainOnPorn) as engaging in defamation. RealYBOP’s lies, harassment, defamation, and cyberstalking have caught up with it. The @BrainOnPorn twitter is now named in two defamation lawsuits.
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.
Update (January, 2021): Prause filed a second frivolous legal proceeding against me in December, 2020 for alleged defamation. At a hearing on January 22, 2021 an Oregon court ruled in my favor and charged Prause with costs and an additional penalty. This failed effort was one of a dozen lawsuits Prause publicly threatened and/or filed in the previous months. After years of malicious reporting, she has escalated to threats of actual lawsuits to try to silence those who reveal her close ties to the porn industry and her malicious conduct, or who have made sworn statements in the 3 defamation suits currently active against her.
Overview: Prause’s fabrications of victim-hood exposed as groundless: she is the perpetrator, not the victim. (created in 2019)
Since many of the Prause and Ley assertions revolve around their mythology of being victimized by “anti-porn activists,” I debunk their fabrications in this very first section (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, 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.
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).
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.
March & April 2013: The beginning of Nicole Prause’s libel, threats and harassment (after she & David Ley target Wilson in a Psychology Today blog post)
First Key point: Prause initiated all direct contacts with Gary Wilson. Prause continues to publicly harass and libel Wilson while simultaneously (falsely) claiming he is under a court’s “no contact” order. 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.
March 5, 2013
Author of “The Myth of Sex Addiction,” David Ley, and Nicole Prause team up to write a Psychology Today blog post with the strategic title: “Your Brain on Porn – It’s NOT Addictive.” (Your Brain On Porn is a website founded by Wilson.) It was about Nicole Prause’s unpublished, yet to be peer-reviewed EEG study (“Sexual desire, not hypersexuality, is related to neurophysiological responses elicited by sexual images”).
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).
Second key point: Five months before Prause’s EEG study (Steele et al., 2013) was published, both Prause and Ley were targeting Gary Wilson and his website.
March 7, 2013
Wilson published a Psychology Today blog post responding to the content in the David Ley post. Ley’s blog post and Wilson’s response were eventually removed by Psychology Today editors, as the underlying study wasn’t yet available. You can find the original Ley and Wilson blog posts archived here. It’s important to note that Wilson’s blog post clearly states it was only responding to Ley’s description of the Prause study. Later Nicole Prause would falsely accuse Wilson of misrepresenting her study (that only she and Ley had seen, and were making public claims about – which were later shown to be unfounded).
Wilson posts under David Ley’s article requesting the study:
“Hey David – I’m wondering how you got your hands on a study that has yet to published, or mentioned anywhere else. Are you willing to send me a copy?”
In response to the above comment, Prause contacted the Psychology Today editors, commented under my PT article, and emailed Wilson the following. In the email, Prause attacks Wilson personally, and mistakenly states that he did not ask for the study. He had, in fact, asked David Ley for it. The email:
From: Nicole Prause <nprause@________>
Dear Mr. Wilson,
It is illegal for you to misrepresent our science having never even requested a copy of the manuscript. It will be treated as such. Our article actually is very balanced. Unlike you, I have peer-reviewed publications on both sides of this issue. You have attempted to discredit it by describing things that were not done. I am pursuing this with Psychology Today now, but I would advise you to remove the post yourself before I am forced to pursue further action.
You also do not have permission to quote any portion of this email. It is private communication.
Sell your books on your own merit. Don’t try to make money off the backs of scientists doing their jobs. I can tell this study clearly panics you because the design and data are strong, but it is egregious to have not even asked for a copy of the manuscript and just make up content. Shame on you.
Nicole Prause, PhD
Research faculty
UCLA
In addition, Psychology Today editors forwarded a second email from Prause:
Date: April 10, 2013 5:13:30 PM EDT
Topic: Comment on the Blogs
From: Nicole Prause, PhD <nprause@_____________
To whom it may concern:
I was surprised to see an article written about a study of mine by Gary Wilson on Psychology Today.
I have no problem with him representing his own views and interpretations of studies, but he does not and could not have had access to mine. It is under review and he never requested a copy from any of the authors. I notified him that it should be removed. He has not yet done so. Of course, once it is public record, he will have access to it and be able to represent it (hopefully) more accurately.
Of course, knowingly misrepresenting a person to denigrate them is illegal. I hope Psychology Today will take this matter seriously. I will contact other board members as well, in case your cue is full and may take longer to respond.
Submitted by Nicole Prause, PhD on April 10, 2013 – 1:54pm.
Unfortunately, these authors never requested access to our manuscript, so they actually did not review it. They have made a number of egregious errors misrepresenting the science in this article. I am investigating who to contact to remove this article given the lack of due diligence by the authors.
We are now using this as our course example of the misrepresentation of science in the media now, though, so thank you for that opportunity.
The groundless legal threats, false claims, and playing the victim begin in her very first contact with Wilson. Nothing Prause says is true:
Wilson did not describe Prause’s study or misrepresent it in any way. He only responded to Ley’s description of the study. Read Ley’s and Wilson’s blog posts and judge for yourself.
Wilson asked for a copy of the study (Prause refused to supply it).
Prause initiated all contact with Wilson.
Wilson’s email response to Nicole Prause:
On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 3:14 PM, gary wilson <> wrote:
Hi Nicole,
I commented under your comment. Have a look.
We make no money on this. My website has no advertising and we accept no donations. We have no services to sell. I have no book to sell. My wife’s book, which appears on PT, is not about porn.
If you want to be truly fair, please send us the full study and give us permission to blog about it – as you did with Dr. Ley.
I’ll be anticipating your study,
Gary Wilson
April 12, 2013
Two days later Prause contacted Wilson again threatening further legal action. She somehow tracked down one of Wilson’s comments on the porn-recovery site Your Brain Rebalanced. It was posted on a long thread about David Ley’s original blog post. Wilson’s comment was meant to explain why both Ley’s and Wilson’s Psychology Today posts had been removed by Psychology Today. This signaled Prause’s pattern of cyberstalking, as a not even a Google search could locate that post. How did Prause know about this thread on a porn recovery forum?
This is libel. Please remove this post or I will follow up with legal action.
Nicole Prause
Wilson responds:
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 11:09 AM, gary wilson <> wrote:
Dear Nicole Prause,
Maybe you didn’t know that my wife is a graduate of Yale law school. I said nothing libelous. In fact, my statements are quite accurate.
1) You have refused to hand over your unpublished study.
2) You were nasty and threatening, as you are now.
3) In addition, you falsely stated that I make money from guys struggling to recover from porn addiction.
4) You also mischaracterized my PT post, as it was a clear response to David Ley’s description of your unpublished study. You chose not correct Ley’s description or make the full study available to me, even when I asked about it in the comment section one month ago.
You have yet to answer my original questions (posed in the comments section):
1) Why did you release your study to only David Ley? As the author of the “Myth of Sex Addiction,” and someone who claims porn addiction cannot exist, why was only he the only Chosen One?
2) Why haven’t you corrected David Ley’s interpretation of your study? It has been up for over a month, and you’ve commented twice on it in the last month.
3) You commented under Ley’s post one month ago. I immediately posted a comment under you comment, with several specific questions directed to you about your study. That was your chance to both respond and offer the study. You did neither. Why?
I’m fine with making our exchange public. Won’t it be interesting when you file a lawsuit against a couple of PT bloggers who dare to take on your research?
Best,
Gary Wilson
Prause emails again with more crazy claims & legal threats [Note: Neither Wilson nor his wife ever initiated contact with Prause. She is the one who repeatedly contacted them and threatened them with groundless legal action.]
This is to notify both you and your wife that your (both you and your wife’s) contact is unwanted. Per stalking statutes in your home state (http://courts.oregon.gov/Lane/Restraining.page), any additional harassing contact will be interpreted as actionable harassment.
You do not have my permission to share this private communication in any forum.
Nicole Prause
Wilson sends his final email to Prause, to set the record straight: that she is the one initiating all contact and the only person making threats (and false claims):
To: nprause Subject: RE: [PT] Inquiry via Psychology Today
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:44:12 -0700
Dear Nicole Prause,
Harassment? I have not initiated one email exchange with you, including this one.
The first, initiated by you on 4/10/13, where you had the last email. And the one below, where you are trying to create a false impression that someone is harassing you, when in fact you are threatening me for the second time.
You are also the one who contacted Psychology Today’s editor to interfere with my blog post. My wife has had no contact with you whatsover.
We do not need your permission.
Gary Wilson
The end of the beginning with Nicole Prause.
Note: The above email exchange has been touted by Prause as as “a no-contact order”. It’s not. Prause continues to harass Wilson on social media and behind the scenes, while simultaneously claiming that Wilson has been barred from responding to her lies. While Prause ends many of her targeted social media attacks by asserting a “no-contact request”, there is no such thing. A “no-contact request” is as legally binding as requesting someone “stop and smell the roses”. Prause is trying to trick the public (her twitter followers) into believing she has obtained a restraining order or an injunction. She hasn’t. Its just a tweet. A garbage pile of fabricated fake victim-hood by the actual perpetrator, Prause.
Late July, 2013: Prause publishes her EEG study (Steele et al., 2013). Wilson critiques it. Prause employs multiple usernames to post lies around the Web
In late July 2013 Prause’s EEG study (Steele et al., 2013) was finally published. It arrived with much press coverage, including this Prause Interview by a Psychology Today blogger: New Brain Study Questions Existence of “Sexual Addiction.” A few days later Gary Wilson published his detailed analysis of Steele et al., 2013 and Prause’s claims put forth in the above interview and elsewhere. Wilson posted it on his Psychology Today blog as Nothing Correlates With Nothing In SPAN Lab’s New Porn Study. Incidentally, Psychology Today, apparently in response to Prause’s threats, ultimately unpublished not only Wilson’s critique of this study, but also the critiques of two professional experts in the field who wrote about the study’s weaknesses.
Ultimately, Prause’s findings and claims in the media were re-analyzed and critiqued repeatedly by various other experts and by eight peer-reviewed papers: Peer-reviewed critiques of Steele et al., 2013
All the peer-reviewed papers agree with Gary Wilson’s analysis that Steele et al. actually supports the porn addiction model, and that Prause misrepresented her findings to the press. Prause’s two claims versus the study’s actual findings:
1) Prause claimed that subjects “brains did not respond like other addicts”.
Reality: The study had no control group for comparison. More importantly, the study reported higher EEG readings (relative to neutral pictures) when subjects were briefly exposed to pornographic photos. Studies consistently show that an elevated P300 occurs when addicts are exposed to cues (such as images) related to their addiction (see more).
2) Prause suggested that her subjects simply had “high sexual desire”.
Reality: In line with the Cambridge University brain scan studies, Steele et al. reported greater cue-reactivity (higher EEG readings) to porn correlating with less desire for partnered sex. To put another way – individuals with greater brain activation to porn would rather masturbate to porn than have sex with a real person. Prause claimed that porn users merely had “high libido”, yet the results of the study say the exact opposite: their desire for partnered sex was dropping in relation to their porn use (see more).
With her unsupported claims exposed by Gary Wilson, John A. Johnson PhD and Don Hilton MD, Prause then resorted to behind the scenes maneuvering at Psychology Today, cyberstalking, and various forms of intimidation. To this day Prause and others continue to cite her work as “debunking the field,” without mentioning or offering any response to any of the formal criticism apart from ad hominem attacks on some of the authors.
Within a few days of publishing Wilson’s critique, various usernames began posting comments wherever Gary Wilson’s name appeared. The comments are very similar in content and tone, falsely claiming that 1) Wilson had never taught anatomy, physiology, pathology or attended college, 2) Wilson stole a woman’s pictures and placed them on a porn site, 3) Wilson has a police report filed on him, 4) Wilson is an unemployed massage therapist, 5) Wilson is charged with stalking a poor woman, 6) Wilson has been reported to LAPD, UCLAPD and the FBI. These same false assertions are made by no other Wilson critic and continue to this day in tweets and comments by Prause and by her many sockpuppets.
The above claims are ludicrous, but the lies about stolen “pictures on a porn site“, “a police report has been filed“, “stalking a poor woman/scientist” and “unemployed massage therapist” incriminate Prause as the cyberstalker posting the 2013 comments and the dozens of fake usernames with hundreds of comments over the next 5 years. (Note – A call to the Los Angeles police and the UCLA campus police revealed no such report in their systems.) Below is an example taken from Wilson’s YouTube inbox (7/26/13):
From a second YouTube channel for Wilson’s radio show:
Another example:
Another example:
Another example:
Another example:
Another example:
Another example:
Another example:
Another example:
More by Nikky:
More. “RunningBiker” comments (Prause is a runner, who also rides a motorcycle):
A Key point: Both the cyberstalker and Nicole Prause have stated that Wilson “stole photos of a woman” and “had a police report on file for stealing these photos.” One in the same person.
1) “Photos stolen” “on a porn site”
Here’s the reality: Gary Wilson wrote this Psychology Today blog post about this Nicole Prause Psychology Today Interview (which contains a picture of Prause). Psychology Today required at least one picture (all of Wilson’s Psychology Today articles contained several pictures). Since this blog post was about Nicole Prause’s interview and her EEG study, it seemed appropriate to use a picture of Prause from a UCLA website. The picture that accompanied Wilson’s Psychology Today blog post was also used with this same article on YBOP.
The photo of Prause came from what Wilson 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 (Prause has recently 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 was unclear how Prause could be claiming copyright to 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 Wilson wrote UCLA concerning Prause’s libelous PDF (below), 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 Wilson learned this. Undisputed fact: Prause never contacted Wilson to request that her picture be removed from the blog post. Wilson knew nothing until Prause filed a DMCA request (below) and Wilson 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 lab website was used in an article about a study published and promoted by UCLA & Nicole Prause. The “porn site” was YBOP, a claim that is laughable, as it is a porn recovery support website without x-rated content.
Addendum: Prause is now claiming in an AmazonAWS PDF that Wilson 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 Wilson’s ISP told him that they would “close his website if he did it a fourth time.” This is fabricated nonsense.
2) “police report filed”
It’s been over 6 years and Wilson has never been contacted by the police (a call to the Los Angeles police department and the UCLA campus police revealed no such report in their systems). Although Prause has repeated this undocumented claim dozens of times, she has also failed to divulge what law Wilson supposedly violated. In 2018, she added the tall-tale that Wilson was twice reported to the FBI. What’s next, the CIA, ICE, Homeland Security… maybe a mall cop? (Addendum: Gary Wilson filed a freedom of information request with the FBI and the FBI confirmed that Prause was lying: no report has ever been filed on Wilson. See – November, 2018: FBI affirms Nicole Prause’s fraud surrounding defamatory claims)
Evidence directly connecting Prause to these many groundless comments about “stolen pictures” and “a police report.”
Prause filed a DMCA take down of her SPAN Lab picture on July 21, 2013 – http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1091617 and the server removed it before Wilson saw the related email notices. Wilson removed the photo from its other location when asked via a second DMCA filing, even though UCLA, not Prause, appeared (as far as he could tell) to be the copyright owner.
Prause has tweeted that she filed a police report on Wilson (see details below under “Prause & Ley attack NoFap founder Alexander Rhodes“). A call to the LAPD and UCLA campus police revealed no such report in their system.
Nicole Prause published a PDF on her SPAN Lab website (more on this in the next section) with all the usual claims and lies echoing all the preceding comments. It also lied that:
“Wilson has been found guilty of stealing other people’s images”
Again, this was apparently a reference to the same picture that accompanied the Psychology Today post, and the Psychology Today post was about Prause’s interview on Psychology Today. It was the same picture she had chosen for the top of her SPAN Lab website (which falsely proclaimed it was a UCLA site).
Most of these comments claimed that Wilson “stole” and placed Prause’s picture on a pornographic website.
Prause never contacted Wilson about the picture.
Prause filed a DMCA take down of her picture, which forced the company hosting YBOP to remove the picture without first contacting Gary Wilson.
Similar groundless comments continue to be posted to this day by Prause sockpuppets and by Prause on her twitter and Facebook accounts. The comments are often identical to the July, 2013 “anonymous” comments (many more examples below and on page 2). PDF of Nicole Prause aliases she used to harass & defame
Others – August, 2013: John A. Johnson PhD debunks Prause’s claims about Steele et al., 2013; Prause retaliates.
At the same time that Prause was engaging in cyberstalking and threatening groundless legal action against Wilson, she went after senior psychology professor emeritus John A. Johnson. Prause was enraged by Johnson’s saying that spokesperson Prause made claims that did match her actual results (as Wilson had also said). Commenting under the Psychology Today interview of Nicole Prause, Professor John A. Johnson commented twice:
Mustanski asks, “What was the purpose of the study?” And Prause replies, “Our study tested whether people who report such problems [problems with regulating their viewing of online erotica] look like other addicts from their brain responses to sexual images.”
But the study did not compare brain recordings from persons having problems regulating their viewing of online erotica to brain recordings from drug addicts and brain recordings from a non-addict control group, which would have been the obvious way to see if brain responses from the troubled group look more like the brain responses of addicts or non-addicts.
Instead, Prause claims that their within-subject design was a better method, where research subjects serve as their own control group. With this design, they found that the EEG response of their subjects (as a group) to erotic pictures was stronger than their EEG responses to other kinds of pictures. This is shown in the inline waveform graph (although for some reason the graph differs considerably from the actual graph in the published article).
So this group who reports having trouble regulating their viewing of online erotica has a stronger EEG response to erotic pictures than other kinds of pictures. Do addicts show a similarly strong EEG response when presented with their drug of choice? We don’t know. Do normal, non-addicts show a response as strong as the troubled group to erotica? Again, we do not know. We don’t know whether this EEG pattern is more similar to the brain patterns of addicts or non-addicts.
The Prause research team claims to be able to demonstrate whether the elevated EEG response of their subjects to erotica is an addictive brain response or just a high-libido brain response by correlating a set of questionnaire scores with individual differences in EEG response. But explaining differences in EEG response is a different question from exploring whether the overall group’s response looks addictive or not. The Prause group reported that the only statistically significant correlation with the EEG response was a negative correlation (r=-.33) with desire for sex with a partner. In other words, there was a slight tendency for subjects with strong EEG responses to erotica to have lower desire for sex with a partner. How does that say anything about whether the brain responses of people who have trouble regulating their viewing of erotica are similar to addicts or non-addicts with a high libido?
Two months later John Johnson published this psychology Today blog post which he linked to in a comment under the same Prause interview.
My mind still boggles at the Prause claim that her subjects’ brains did not respond to sexual images like drug addicts’ brains respond to their drug, given that she reports higher P300 readings for the sexual images. Just like addicts who show P300 spikes when presented with their drug of choice.
How could she draw a conclusion that is the opposite of the actual results? I think it could be due to her preconceptions–what she expected to find. I wrote about this elsewhere. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cui-bono/201308/preconceptions-may-color-conclusions-about-sex-addiction
When I first conceived this blog post and began to compose it about a month ago, my original intention was to describe in exquisite detail the specific ways in which I saw the proponents of opposite sides of the debate exaggerating or overextending their arguments beyond the actual data in the study. I subsequently changed my mind when I observed a firestorm of emotionally-charged rhetoric erupting among the debate participants. Not arguments about what the data logically implied, but ad hominem threats, including threats of legal action. I saw a PT blog post disappear, apparently because one of the parties demanded that it be taken down. I even received a couple of angry emails myself because one of the parties had heard that I had raised questions about the proper interpretation of the research in question in a scientific forum.
So, I have decided to quietly tip-toe out of the room. I have also decided to go ahead and post here what I had already composed a month ago, simply to present an example of my empirical claim that science is not a purely objective enterprise, and that actual scientists can become very personally and emotionally involved in their work. The controversy in question is also an excellent example of a common trend among U.S. researchers to overestimate soft-science results.
November 2013: Prause places a libelous PDF on her SPAN Lab website. Content mirrors “anonymous” comments around the Web
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. Such comments continue to this day on various recovery forums and other venues, posted with other usernames (PDF of Nicole Prause aliases she used to harass & defame).
If there was ever any doubt as to who was actually behind these comments, the PDF puts an end to it. Gary Wilson contacted UCLA to report the PDF’s defamatory statements, as he still believed SPAN Lab was a UCLA website (at the time, SPAN Lab’s copyright was owned by UCLA and its address was within a UCLA building). UCLA acknowledged the existence of the PDF, and its subsequent removal in a letter. Its URL was – http://www.span-lab.com/WilsonIsAFraud.pdf.
How did Gary Wilson discover the above PDF? His Internet browser was redirected to the PDF when he visited the SPAN lab website (representing itself as a UCLA website). Knowing Wilson’s IP address, Prause made a habit of redirecting Wilson’s 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. More evidence that Prause is likely the one responsible for cyberstalking events (only a small portion of which are detailed on this page). For example, two PDFs containing material nearly identical to Prause’s libelous PDF were uploaded onto DocStoc a few days after Wilson published his critique of Prause’s 2013 EEG study:
Contrary to claims the “documents” show nothing, except that Prause is the person who published both PDFs. Wilson complained to UCLA about Prause’s libelous PDF. The UCLA reply:
UPDATE: 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:
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).
Support of the porn industry:
direct support of the FSC (Free Speech Coalition), AVN (Adult Video Network), porn producers, performers, and their agendas
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:
December, 2013: Prause’s initial tweet is about Wilson & the CBC: “RealScience” posts same false claims on same day on multiple websites
On December 18, 2013 Nicole Prause’s maiden tweet for her new Twitter account was about Gary Wilson and a CBC interview. We 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 (more below). Prause’s original Twitter URL was https://twitter.com/NicolePrause/. If interested you can read Wilson’s response to the CBC here.
On December 18th & 19th “RealScience” or “RealScientist” posted several similar, equally misleading comments on sites that mentioned Gary Wilson.(PDF of Nicole Prause aliases she used to harass & defame). Who else but Prause could be responsible for these posts, which entirely misrepresent the exchange with the CBC and its response to Wilson? A few examples, where Prause lies not only about the CBC, but also my credentials, my education, and the courses I have taught:
Prause posting on porn-recovery forum YourBrainRebalanced (YBR), using a name other than “RealScience”(Prause often posts on YBR, harassing men in recovery and defaming Gary Wilson, Gabe Deem and former UCLA colleague Rory Reid)
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Tweeting about CBC (using her new twitter account) in 2016 falsely claiming that Wilson threatened the CBC.
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In the next section Prause (“RealScience”) posts her CBC drivel on porn recovery forum YourBrainRebalanced, and asks Gary Wilson about the size of his penis. Prause transforms Wilson’s reply to her penis question (where he accidentally typed “Miss” Prause) into a campaign defaming Wilson and his wife as misogynists. Not kidding.
Here’s an enlarged version of the image she included in the above tweet. Link to Wilson’s full answer. It is Prause who is being sexist as Prause asks Gary Wilson about the size of his penis:
Nevertheless, Prause has transformed Wilson’s inadvertently typing “Miss” in his reply to her questions about his manhood into her never ending campaign to paint Wilson, and others as misogynists. Below are just a few examples of how Prause has weaponized her bizarre interest in Gary Wilson’s penis and his 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 Wilson, Marnia Robinson, Don Hilton MD, and nofap founder Alexander Rhodes of misogyny. Any suggestion that Wilson (or his wife), Hilton, or Rhodes are motivated by misogyny is fabricated, as their 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 falsehoods or misrepresentations of the research is a misogynist. She does this to shut down actual debate on twitter and other social media platforms, to prevent her falsehoods from being exposed. It has worked, so she continues the defamation.
It’s ironic that her infographic 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 used the following two YouTube usernames to post her comments:
The following tweets are examples of Prause obsessively playing the misogyny card and tweeting her “everyone is a misogynist infographic”. Note: Prause has never provided a single verifiable example of her being a victim of personal attacks or misogyny (certainly not by the person’s she names). It’s all propaganda. Unfortunately many believe her falsehoods.
Prause looks for any opportunity to tweet her infographic:
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She has never provided a single documented incident of anything arising from FTND. on the other hand Prause has engaged in about 100 separate instances of defamation and harassment targeting FTND. See these sections for a whole lot more:
Claims that “sexist stalker Gary Wilson” threatened her, but has never provided a singe example.
Prause falsely claims that there are “hundreds of studies” contradicting harms of porn – but can only cite the same 5 cherry-picked, outlier studies described here.
How did Taylor Kohut manage to achieve his anomalous results? His study framed egalitarianism as: (1) Support for abortion, (2) Feminist identification, (3) Women holding positions of power, (4) Belief that family life suffers when the woman has a full-time job., and oddly enough (5) Holding more negative attitudes toward the traditional family. Secular populations, which tend to be more liberal, have far higher rates of porn use than religious populations. By choosing these criteria and ignoring endless other variables, lead author Taylor Kohut knew he would end up with porn users scoring higher on his study’s carefully chosen criteria of what constitutes “egalitarianism.” Then he chose a title that spun it all.
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.
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Calls PornHelp.org a harasser for publishing a blog post:
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.
She then implies that Wilson has threatened to kill her.
Absolutely nuts. Again, if she had an actual example, she would provide it. If it were true she would have reported Wilson to the police. But the LAPD and FBI said she never has:
Again, dirty deeds by “activists”. But the deeds are never named and she never provides evidence for a single deed:
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Spreading her myths
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Prause ally spreads her lie that she had a restraining order on Gary Wilson. This nonsense is covered in many sections of this page.
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The preceding tweets represents the tip of the Prause iceberg of her faux victim-hood.
May 2014: Multiple sock puppets post information on YourBrainRebalanced.com that only Prause would know (many more examples)
The day the Max Planck study on porn users was published (suggesting that porn use may have measurable effects on the brain), four aliases including, “txfba”, “touif” and “TrickyPaladin” posted approximately 100 comments on YourBrainRebalanced.com. (PDF of Nicole Prause aliases she used to harass & defame). What’s left of their comments is in this thread, as the troll deleted her comments within a few hours. Most of the touif and TrickyPaladin comments were either attacks on Wilson or meticulously detailed ‘defenses’ of Prause’s 2013 EEG study. Below are few examples caught by a YBR member’s cell phone where TrickyPaladin and touif make detailed assertions about Steele et al., 2013 that only a handful of people could produce (and only Prause would care about):
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I’ll ask, who (other than Prause herself) would know details of a complex EEG study well enough to attempt defense of it, or want to post 100 times on a porn recovery forum to defend it? (If you bothered to read the above comments, know that any and all such claims have been dismantled by this extensive critique, and 8 peer-reviewed papers: Peer-reviewed critiques of Steele et al., 2013)
While Tricky (and other sock puppets) deleted most of her comments, she left a few describing a “yet to be published chapter by Prause” supposedly chronicling Gary Wilson’s evil deeds:
Who but Prause would know details of an unpublished chapter by Prause? The above comment is from May, 2014. The “upcoming” Prause chapter was in fact published 8 months later in this book – “New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law.“ Of course, Prause did not identify Wilson in the chapter, as her claims of “horrible things” are fabricated nonsense.
A few additional Prause aliases used on YourBrainRebalanced.com (others were quickly deleted by the moderators).
As mentioned, sock puppets posting Prause-like comments continue to this day on porn recovery sites such as reddit/pornfree and reddit/nofap. Right from the beginning Prause had an odd habit of frequently creating usernames from 2-4 capitalized words (i.e. GaryWilsonStalker). While the usernames and comments are often deleted by the sock puppet, a few examples with content remain (all were created for only Prause-like comments, then immediately abandoned):
Examples of Prause sockpuppets on Quora, where Gary Wilson occasionally answered questions about porn addiction. The sockpuppets only commented under Wilson’s answers. Quora requires members to use their actual names. Mods ban trolls who use fake names (as they did with Prause’s fake names):
Others – Summer, 2014: Prause urges patients to report sex addiction therapists to state boards
Prause makes it no secret that she vehemently opposes the concepts of sex and porn addiction. In the summer of 2014 Prause placed the following notice on her SPAN Lab website. You can read for yourself that Prause is encouraging all individuals being treated for sex addiction to report their therapists to the state board (it contains a handy hyperlink):
A month later Prause reminds us all again to report our local sex addiction therapist. It’s free and easy!
Prause doesn’t stop with tweets directed at a profession. She ups her game, falsely accusing psychotherapists of fraudulent therapy. Isn’t this rather reckless for a psychologist, especially given that (1) diagnoses of compulsive sexual behavior can be made using the World Health Organization’s ICD-10 and (2) Section F52.8 of the DSM itself recognizes the diagnostic validity of excessive sex drive as a valid, reimbursable disorder? In short, Prause is mistaken and behaving unethically.
Prause employs her alias account RealYBOP to tell stories, suggesting porn addiction therapist should be reported. We have Prause tweeting with Prause (RealYBOP)
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Fall 2014: Documentation of Prause lying to film producers about Gary Wilson and Donald L. Hilton Jr., MD
Documentary producers forwarded the following email to Gary Wilson:
Re: Documentary on porn
Hi **********
I am open to chatting with you, but I should probably clarify two items.
First, I do believe, and have published, some negative effects of sex films. It is fair to say that I do not believe it is addicting. If it is useful to you to have a scientist who can talk about both the benefits and possible problems with sex films, I am probably best-suited to that type of role.
Second, I am not willing to be placed in opposition to Gary Wilson, Marnia Robinson, or Don Hilton. None of these individuals are scientists, and all have attacked me personally, making it unsafe for me to be put in a direct confrontation with them. For example, they claimed that I was secretly funded by pornography, falsified my data, and wrote me and my university chancellor many times trying to harass me at home and work. If you were considering these individuals, I would be happy to get you in touch with some actual scientists who support that sex films can lead to addiction. These individuals, in my opinion, would be scraping the bottom of the barrel for a film.
I realize this information may be in direct opposition to your desire to have free artistic reign, so I understand if I might not be useful to your film given this information. Regardless, best of luck with your project!
Nikky
Nicole Prause, Ph.D.
Associate Research Scientist
University of California, Los Angeles
www.span-lab.com
Prause is once again lying. As addressed below, Wilson never said that Prause had “falsified her data” or that she was “funded by pornography.” While Gary Wilson wrote UCLA chronicling Prause’s harassment and cyberbullying (see below), he never attempted to contact Prause directly at home or at work. (In reality, it is Prause who initiated all direct contact with Gary Wilson as documented in the first section.) Donald Hilton Jr. MD confirmed that he has never attempted to contact Nicole Prause or UCLA, nor did he say what Prause claims in the above email.
Key point: There is reason to believe that this behind-the-scenes defamation of Wilson and others is standard procedure for Prause. See further example relating to TIME magazine and Gabe Deem below. Note how Prause tries to control who is being interviewed by stating that she is not willing “to be placed in opposition to Gary Wilson or Don Hilton.”
Others – December, 2014: Prause employs an alias to attack and defame UCLA colleague Rory Reid PhD (on a porn-recovery forum). Concurrently, UCLA decides not to renew Prause’s contract.
A little background on Rory Reid and former UCLA researcher Nicole Prause is useful here. Rory Reid has been a research psychologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA since before Nicole Prause’s brief stint at UCLA began in late 2012. Reid’s research areas are hypersexuality and gambling addiction.
Reid, like Prause, has often argued against the existence of “sex addiction.” Reid stated in a 2013 article that his office was right next door to Prause’s at UCLA. In 2013 Nicole Prause listed Rory Reid as a member of her now defunct “SPAN Lab.” But in 2014 everything changed: she began attacking her former colleague Reid.
On December 5th, 2014 a new member of the porn recovery site YourBrainRebalanced (TellTheTruth) posted 4 comments attacking Rory Reid urging readers to report Reid to California authorities. A screenshot of the comment of this Prause alias:
As documented in the above sections, Prause made a habit of commenting on YBR using various aliases. Moreover, Prause regularly use aliases with 2-4 capitalized words as usernames.
In her first comment TellTheTruth posted 2 links. One link went to a PDF on Scribd with supposed evidence supporting TellTheTruth’s claims and a link to the California.gov website search for psychology license.
Two more comments by TellTheTruth:
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Below are a few screenshots of the PDF that TellTheTruth placed on Scribd:
Note the same “2013 copyright State of California” description of Prause’s current screenshot and TellTheTruth’s 2-year old screenshot.
Key takeaway: The TellTheTruth comments and PDF from December, 2014 incriminate Nicole Prause as cyberstalking Rory Reid at about the same time that UCLA chose not renew Prause’s contract. Merely a coincidence? Or was Prause retaliating against Reid when UCLA did not renew her contract? Or did they not renew her contract due to her unprofessional behavior?
While Prause claims that she was compelled to leave a dream job at UCLA to pursue “groundbreaking research,” certain facts cannot be denied: Prause harassed and defamed UCLA colleague Rory Reid. UCLA did not renew her contract. Rory Reid remains a researcher at UCLA.
January, 2015: “The Prause Chapter” described 9 months earlier by a YourBrainRebalanced.com troll is finally published
[To recap, a YourBrainRebalanced troll (TrickyPaladin) posted 50 comments or more on the same day the JAMA fMRI study on porn users was published (affirming that porn users’ brains show measurable changes correlating with time/years of use). Most of TrickyPaladin’s comments were either attacks on Wilson or meticulously detailed (attempted) defenses of Prause’s 2013 EEG study. While Tricky deleted most of her comments, she left a few saying a chapter in an upcoming book would detail horrible things done by Wilson.]
The book and chapter now arrive: “New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law.” The chapter in question (“The Science and Politics of Sex Addiction Research.”) is authored by Nicole Prause and Timothy Fong. It consists mostly of a discussion of the appropriate “model” for understanding compulsive pornography use. Only two paragraphs are devoted to Prause’s undocumented and unsupported claims of being harassed. The most outlandish claim is that “individuals mapped routes to the laboratory address.” In other words, Prause is claiming that Google maps told her when people were searching for her lab’s address. Of course Prause did not name Wilson or anyone else in her chapter.
Key point: Knowing the details of an unpublished chapter 9 months before it is published incriminates Prause as TrickyPaladin. As do the meticulously detailed comments defending Prause’s flawed 2013 EEG study.
“Some individuals repeatedly emailed her after we had requested contact to stop… resulting in a police report”
Both claims are aimed at Wilson, and both are false.
[As explained above, here’s the reality behind each claim:
1) “Photos stolen”
A single picture, selected by Prause herself, from (what appeared to be) a UCLA lab website was used in an article about a study published and promoted by UCLA & Nicole Prause. The “porn site” was YBOP, a preposterous claim, as it is a porn recovery support website without x-rated content.
Police Report: Wilson has never been contacted by the police. A call to the Los Angeles police department and UCLA campus police revealed no such report in their system.
Email Claim: It was Prause who initiated all contact with Wilson after he wrote a Psychology Today blog post. Prause’s harassing emails contained threats and false statements, and it was Prause who continued to harass Wilson. (screenshots of our entire email exchange)
In the chapter Prause also stated:
“Noticeably absent from these attacks are published critiques from any scientist.”
Contrary to Prause’s claim 18 peer-reviewed critiques of her studies have been published:
“The research was never stopped by these attempts.”
As for Prause’s research at UCLA never stopping, it’s important to note that UCLA chose not to renew Prause’s employment contract (although she continued to claim publicly that she was still a UCLA researcher employed at the medical school). Prause hasn’t been employed by UCLA or any other university since late 2014 or early 2015.
Others – 2015 & 2016: Prause falsely accuses sex addiction therapists of reparative therapy
David Ley and Nicole Prause team up again. This time falsely accusing sex addiction therapists of practicing reparative therapy or conversion therapy. It started with Ley publishing “Homosexuality is Not an Addiction” which not so subtly, falsely accused members of IITAP and SASH of trying to turn their gay clients straight. (In response to complaints, Ley was later forced to alter the post and Psychology Today eventually deleted the comments.)
Prause was the first to comment, falsely accusing IITAP of harboring reparative therapists, and claiming to have emailed IITAP the names of the accused. While Prause’s comments were later deleted, she commented a few weeks later groundlessly accusing (gay!!) therapist Michael J. Salas of practicing reparative therapy as follows:
Having received no response to her groundless accusations, Prause “outed” Salas as a reparative therapist. She took a sentence out of context, hoping no one would actually visit his website. On his website, however, readers discover that Salas specializes in therapy for the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender community. He is a member the “Texas Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues in Counseling”, Salas also states:
“For clients who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual, I provide LGBT Affirming Therapy. There is no such thing as changing someone’s sexual orientation”
It doesn’t end there. On November 22, 2015 Psychology Today blogger Joe Kort published “Why I Am No Longer a Sex-Addiction Therapist,” which created a brouhaha on all fronts. Nicole Prause immediately commented about her email exchanges with IITAP (Prause mistakenly called the organization CSAT, which is IITAP’s certification):
Submitted by Nicole prause on November 23, 2015 – 6:21pm
On submitting specific names and concerns, CSAT did not respond. After pressed with three queries and by other professionals they responded that te allegations were false. They provided no investigative process. For this writer to inquire would change nothing and make him yet another target of that community. I would discourage anyone from tangling with a group with no intention of addressing its problems.
I am happy to share the emails with you privately. They were disgusting to me as a licensed psychologist too.
Actually, any investigation shows her claims were completely false. Click on the link to Prause’s comment and you see no replies. That’s because Joe Kort deleted all comments challenging Prause, leaving her fabrications unchallenged. We have reproduced those (now) deleted comments below. The first 2 comments have CSAT Michelle Saffier asking Prause for data, and Prause responding:
The 3 Prause “complaints” were nothing more than cyberstalking. Michelle Saffier received no data or emails from Prause. The next comment challenging Prause was posted by anonymous:
Again, Joe Kort deleted the comments challenging Prause, while allowing Prause’s defamatory claims to remain. Kort’s actions drew a Twitter response, and an unsatisfactory response (Joe Kort later deleted his Twitter replies to Michelle and others). Joe Kort’s deletion of comments drew yet another comment under his blog post (since deleted).
Joe Kort closed all comments and deleted the above comment. Prause’s comment remains unchallenged to this day. Prause continues her unsupported and libelous claims concerning CSAT therapists. For example, this March, 2016 Tweet with compatriot David Ley.
Another CSAT therapist using “sex addiction” as a justification for reparative therapy. #IITAP stop supporting now.
It is, predictably, entirely untrue.
Prause and Ley go to twitter to cyber-stalk & harass therapists and IITAP (most of the therapists they wrongfully target were gay!). A few examples:
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Has nothing to do with IITAP:
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Prause hears things…..
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Article has nothing to with IITAP:
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The next 3 tweets have since been deleted by Prause. In fact, scroll Prause’s entire twitter thread and you will find no CSAT named as a reparative therapist.
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David Ley continues his defamation of CSAT’s (2019)
Prause and Ley exposed as sick cyberstalkers.
April, 2019 – Playing the victim, while providing zero evidence for claim that there are “therapists directly supporting people sending her death threats”.
Others – March, 2015 (ongoing): Prause and her sock puppets (including “PornHelps“) go after Gabe Deem (numerous additional instances of defamation)
Gabe Deem recovered from severe porn-induced ED by quitting internet porn use. He now runs Reboot Nation and occasionally appears on TV and radio to discuss his and other men’s experiences with porn-induced sexual dysfunctions. In March of 2015 Gabe published a detailed critique of the Nicole Prause and Jim Pfaus paper, “Viewing Sexual Stimuli Associated with Greater Sexual Responsiveness, Not Erectile Dysfunction.” Everything in Gabe’s page is accurate, documented, and unassailable. Gabe’s critique aligns with a Letter to the Editor of the journal where the paper appeared, by Richard A. Isenberg MD, though it provides more details about the Prause paper’s glaring discrepancies and unsupported statements.
A long debate ensued when user “FapSlap” posted the Prause & Pfaus paper on reddit/nofap. Prause-apologist “FapSlap” (who appears to be a researcher) eventually claimed to contact Nicole Prause looking for ammunition to defend the Prause paper. Here’s FapSlap’s comment confirming not only his/her email exchanges with Prause, but a future response to her critics:
Of course you will probably say ‘fake is fake.’ But believe me it’s not. Out of respect I am not posting the conversation. You will have proof soon enough for the journal, trust me And I will be quite happy to see your ‘bullet in the barrel’ critique be thrown out the window.
Actually, he did just write me and he is correct. We collected the full IIEF in many studies in which we do not ultimately publish the data. Sometimes we choose not to, sometimes reviewers tell us to remove them because they are not relevant.
We are publishing a follow-up letter in the journal to show all the counts remain correct. All the analyses remain correct. The conclusions stand.
I will not be responding to any follow-up posts. I posted here only out of compassion, because you are lying to this poor person. Wait for the letter. It is to appear in April and will dispel all the myths RebootNation is propagating to the poor people they are using to fund their speaking travel and fees and false “counselor” titles.
The promised response did not address any of Isenberg’s concerns (as pointed out subsequently by Deem) and merely added new unsupported claims and untrue statements. Prause also falsely states that Gabe (RebootNation) is lying and that he makes money from RebootNation and speaking fees. While none of this is true, these same exact claims soon appear again via “PornHelps” and several r/pornfree sock puppet user names.
On March 31, 2016, the TIME cover story featuring Gabe, and other men who had recovered from porn-induced sexual problems, was published. On April 1 the following post by TruthWithOut appeared on reddit/pornfree: Gabe Deem admits profiting of NoFAP Reboot Nation. The original post, the “TruthWithOut” username, and a few of her comments, were later deleted (though most of her comments remained). The original post, claiming TIME had “outed” the nefarious Deem:
The reddit/pornfree moderator “Iguanaforhire” recognizes the sock puppet has previously posted the same false content:
It doesn’t. Person made a new account just to bother us. Again.
You can read TruthWithOut’s remaining comments and see the same false claims repeated over and over: 1) Gabe is lying about everything, 2) he never had ED, 3) he makes money from both RebootNation and speaking fees, and, 4) he’s unemployed. All untrue. One example:
And I’m waiting on that evidence Gabe. ANY shred of evidence that you are not just lying. No one has seen anything validating any part of your story. Not your supposed girlfriend, no doctor, no one. You could easily provide it, but you haven’t.
You are just taking trips and money from guys you stir into a panic with your made up tales.
The facts? The TIME Magazine article incorrectly stated that Gabe Deem made money through speaking fees. While this is not true (and was later publicly corrected by TIME), TruthWithOut used this journalistic error to launch an attack, claiming a series of lies. A few days later Deem tweeted the correction from the print version of TIME Magazine. (TIME formally acknowledged that it had erred in saying that Deem makes money from his activities connected with RebootNation.) End of story. Nonetheless, several other Prause sock puppets posted similar allegations (that “Deem lied about everything“) on Reddit/pornfree and elsewhere. A few examples:
We have yet another Prause sock puppet (AskingForProof) posting this:
Another Prause sockpuppet with her usual 3 capitalized words, harassing Gabe Deem on reddit/pornfree (https://www.reddit.com/user/TruthWithOut) – with the exact same calims of Gabe faking his porn-induced ED. Prause starts with this post, and is followed by almost 20 comments:
Thing is, Gabe makes no money off his porn-recovery forum and had never taken any money for speaking fees. Prause/TruthWithOut just keep ranting:
Just for fun, yet another r/pornfree thread started by another Prause sock puppet: DontDoDallas – https://www.reddit.com/user/DontDoDallas (Deem resides in Dallas):
Speaking of lies, the above Newsweek article never mentioned Gary Wilson or YBOP.
As outlined later, evidence suggests that Prause shares the @pornhelps twitter account with others and created the PornHelps Disqus username.(@pornhelps later deleted their twitter account when outed as Prause). Below is a PornHelps Disqus comment published around the same time as the r/pornfree lie “Gabe Deem admits profiting”:
Look everybody! It’s Gabe Deem back again reposting anti-sex rants again and puppeting his own upvoted post! You might remember him from the Reason post where he was shredded for posting this anti-science message with links back to his own website. He has no college degree, no job, and is paid (see Time article) for speaking about his erectile problems he claims (with no doctors’ evidence) were “due” to porn.
I know I know, you are going to repost a long list of links hoping no one actually follows them and knows the truth, but this is it. And I’m not engaging further. Hopefully the folks form the previous time you did this will find your posts again Gabe Deem.
PornHelps references the TIME article, making the same false claims as the many Reddit sock puppets. This is no coincidence. Below you will see that Prause as Prause (i.e., using her own name) called TIME journalist Luscombe and NoFap.com founder Alexander Rhodes ‘liars’ and ‘fakers’.
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UPDATES: Using her @BrainOnPorn account, Prause continues to defame and harass Gabe (even though Gabe blocked her). A few exmaples:
As mentioned numerous, because porn-induced sexual problems are the biggest threat to the porn industry agenda, RealYBOP (created April, 2019) is obsessed with debunking porn-induced ED. In this tweet RealYBOP insinuates that Gabe deem and Alex Rhodes are lying about PIED (and are doing so for profit):
RealYBOP claims are untrue and disgusting.
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September 30, 2019 tweet about Alex Rhodes. In it RealYBOP falsely sates that NoFap tried to silence the actual science, but they lost (linking to the WIPO decision in favor of RealYBOP)
In this tweet, RealYBOP said Gabe Deem “Tried to have our website taken down bc he cannot answer science”:
RealYBOP continues, defaming Deem, and stating that he tried to silence scientists (linking to WIPO decision).
RealYBOP falsely states that Deem was involved in a lawsuit. That is defamation per se.
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The next day, RealYBOP trolls Gabe (whom she has blocked):
More of the same, falsely claiming Gabe was involved in the Burgess legal action – it was not a lawsuit.
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More trolling by the blocked RealYBOP account
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RealYBOP and sidekick NerdyKinkyCommie, troll Gabe Deem (note that Gabe had blocked both, but that doesn’t stop cyberstalkers):
First, the links posted by trolls Nerdy and James F. were given to them by RealYBOP/Prause.
Second, Nerdy’s screenshot has been tweeted dozens of times by Prause & RealYBOP. It had nothing to do anything in thread, but it matters not, because RealYBOP/Prause are obsessed with MDPI (parent company of the journal Behavioral Sciences). Behavioral Sciences published Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports(Park et al., 2016). Nerdy is lying about MDPI’s rating. Here are examples of Prause (as Sciencearousal) inserting the above clerical error by the Norwegian Register, who accidentally downgraded MDPI’s rating from the normal “1” to a “0”. The downgraded rating had long been resolved on the MDPI Wikipedia page. Prause knows the zero rating was a clerical error, yet she and RealYBOP tweet that MDPI was downgraded and that MDPI is a predatory journal (both are false and both are in Sciencearousal’s/Prause Wikipedia edit).
Third, the 5-year video has nothing to do with China, or internet addiction boot camps. It was about porn.
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More trolling Gabe (who RealYBOP has blocked):
Nope what?
RealYBOP trolling Gabe Deem, again:
Reality: Gabe was accurate for a drawing. The other 2 comments are red herrings. However, RealYBOP’s comments are irrelevant. Instead, this twitter account claims represent 20 experts, yet its trolling accounts it has blocked, with inane, spurious tweets. How embarrassing. How mentally deranged.
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In a disgusting tweet, RealYBOP calls Gabe Deem a white supremacist (RealYBOP regularly defames and harasses individuals and organizations who say porn use might cause problems).
So liking a tweet of someone you don’t know makes you a white supremacist? All this does is expose RealYBOP as a cyberstalker.
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RealYBOP trolls Gabe Deem again: She lies about the research an attacks him personally.
RE: Cameron Staley’s TEDx Talk. He was a grad student of Prause when he gathered data for Steele et al. 2013. Just a few his falsehoods in his TEDx talk where he cited zero studies to support his propaganda:
Staley says his “mentor was a renowned sex researcher!” What? No one had heard of Prause before Steele et al. was published in July of 2013 (Prause misrepresented its findings).
Staley lies about about the actual results of Steele et al, 2013. He states that “the subjects brains didn’t look like brains of addicts” – but he never tells us how their brains differed from addicts (because they did not). 8 peer-reviewed papers disagree with Staley, and point out that the subjects brains looked exactly like an addict- Peer-reviewed critiques of Steele et al., 2013 (greater cue reactivity correlated with less desire for sex with a partner). Note: Steele et al., did NOT have a control group!
Bottom line according to Staley – believe porn use is just fine and you will be just fine using porn. Unsupported propaganda refuted by hundreds of studies.
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Even though RealYBOP has blocked Gabe Deem she still cyberstalks him:
Disgusting how a “Psychologist” is allowed to say that a young man faked erectile dysfunction (RealYBOP is a liar – Gabe makes no money off of this).
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On January 30, 2020 – Gabe Deem posted the following tweet with snippets from urologist Tarek Pacha’s Porn-Induced ED presention givenat the American Urologialc Association Conference, May 6-10, 2016 (Part 1,Part 2,Part 3, Part 4)
i wake up every morning baffled this isn’t being talked about more.
Here we have a urologist, Dr. Tarek Pacha, presenting at the American Urological Association on the rise in porn-induced sexual dysfunction in young, otherwise healthy men. pic.twitter.com/lk9ymqoFgj
Right after @gabedeem tweeted Dr. Tarek Pacha’s presentation on PIED, RealYBOP twitter (thought to be run by Prause) defamed Dr. Pacha by falsely stating he is NOT a urologist and that he is somehow profiting through suggesting guys quit porn. Reality:
Pacha received only free meals and some lodging from medical companies in an amount far below the average for physicians. More to the point, medical companies would prefer Pacha refrain from telling guys that to achieve sexual health all they have to do is quit porn. Can’t sell any medical devices that way!
RealYBOP begins by posting 4 malicious and defamtory tweets:
No RealYBOP, your “critique” is defamatory, as you falsely stated that Tarek Pacha is not a urologist. You also falsely claim a conflict of interest when there was none: no medical supply company is buying Pacha lunch to encourage him to tell young men to eliminate porn to cure their ED
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February, 2020 – Even though Gabe Deem has blocked RealYBOP, she trolls and defames Gabe. RealYBOP also lies about current state of research.
Immediately after Prause’s Twitter account was suspended, this defamatory post appeared on reddit/pornfree, disparaging and defaming Gary Wilson, Gabe Deem, the author of the above paper (Todd Love), and others. Three newly created usernames commented most (PDF of Nicole Prause aliases she used to harass & defame):
Two usernames were later deleted, but EvidenceForYou remained. Several comments leave no doubt its Nicole Prause – most notably by stating that lawyers are now involved, or that Wilson is about to be sued:
Link – Gary Wilson, they have your IP and all the records courtesy of a subpoena. We’re not chasing these new lies too, just going to stop the one’s you have already been telling. Prepare to file for bankruptcy again.
Link – When they cannot fight the science, they fight the person. They fail, so they spread false rumors that are currently the subject of a lawsuit. This proves it.
Link – For example, in reviewing a (non-existent) critique, they claim the scientist is no longer employed: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/our-response-rory-reids-critique-nicole-prause-study This, by the way, is a recent update (seeing these posts and panicking Gary? Too late, we already sent her attorney the screen shots.) watered down from the earlier “fired”.
A week or two later (October 15, 2015) Gary Wilson received a ‘cease and desist’ letter from a lawyer representing Nicole Prause. It stated that Gary Wilson had made four false and misleading statements about Prause. Of course, all four were untrue (such as Wilson saying that “Prause starred in porn films”….unbelievable!). Wilson responded with a letter stating all were false, and asked for proof of these claims (reproduced later on this page). There was no response by the lawyer or Prause. Yet another example of Prause’s continued pattern of harassment while simultaneously playing the victim.
Others – November, 2015: John Adler, MD blogs about Nicole Prause & David Ley harassment
John Adler, MD, who is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Cureus, wrote a blog post about his harassment at the hands of Nicole Prause and David Ley and their cronies: Intellectual Fascism. In it Adler describes behaviors we have come to expect from Prause & Ley:
Two individuals, whose specialty overlapped the erroneous article [Prause and Ley], attacked the article for its political misstatement, and by extension, Cureus’ journalistic integrity for missing this error during our pre-publication review process.
I immediately invited these critics to set the record straight via our liberal comment and scoring processes, but in a series of personal (and necessarily confidential) emails, the critics refused, insisting on remaining anonymous. Over the next several days they recruited a chorus of similarly-minded colleagues who insisted that the article in question represented serious scientific misconduct and demanded it be retracted… period!
… In parallel, I stumbled upon the existence of a listserv community of likeminded researchers including the two critics, whose major modus operandi is to fiercely act en-mass, hyena-like, oftentimes via social media, when certain partisan political issues arise, such as the article Cureus had unwittingly published.
If ever I witnessed intellectual fascism, this was it; the only thing missing was a goose-stepping mustached man….
By the way, we know he is talking about Ley and Prause because 1) both Ley and Prause engaged in a Twitter storm against Adler prior to his post appearing (we have tweets by Adler, but Prause’s tweets are unavailable because her @NicolePrause account was eventually permanently suspended due to her misconduct). 2) David Ley posted all about this on a sexology listserve.
As part of the storm Adler wrote about, former porn star and current radio show host Melissa Hill, tweeted that Dr. Adlers son “managed to get @NicolePrause PhD’s account suspended!”:
The above is entirely false as Prause’s Twitter account was permanently suspended for posting the personal information of one of the authors of this paper “Neuroscience of Internet Pornography Addiction: A Review and Update” (2015). Trip Adler had nothing to do with it, as Prause caused it herself. The logical conclusion is that Prause fed Melissa Hill this false story. It seems they are friends. Prause has appeared on Melissa Hill’s radio show several times, and Prause re-tweeted a photo of her and Hill together on the red carpet of the Adult Video awards. A few days later, the Free Speech Coalition (the lobbying organization for the porn industry) offered Prause assistance, suggesting she contact Diane, the CEO of the Free Speech Coalition (FSC).
Question: Why is the porn industry offering high-level assistance to Nicole Prause? Whatever the reason, Melissa Hill and the FSC join up to harass Adler’s son (Trip Adler) – all because Prause told Hill and the FSC her fabricated accusation that Trip Adler got her thrown off twitter:
The promised story has yet to appear, and Prause has given no formal (or truthful) explanation for her permanent Twitter suspension. Three years later, Prause is still dishonestly blaming Adler’s son for the permanent suspension of her first Twitter account:
Prause has never provided a single iota of evidence for her tall tale that the CEO of Twitter personally deleted her first twitter account. The truth about Prause’s permanent suspension is right here.
Others – March, 2016: Prause (falsely) tells TIME Magazine that Gabe Deem impersonated a doctor to write a formal critique of her study (letter to the editor) in an academic journal (and the letter was traced to Gabe’s computer).
On March 31, 2016, the TIME cover story (“Porn and the Threat to Virility”), by Belinda Luscombe, featuring Gabe Deem, Nicole Prause and many others, was published. It was a year in the making and TIME had the author and other TIME employees (fact checkers) follow-up on claims made by each person interviewed. In the process, TIME fact-checkers presented Gabe Deem with a final set of questions for him to confirm or to deny.
One fact to confirm or to deny was an allegation put forth by Nicole Prause. Prause had told TIME that Gabe Deem had impersonated a medical doctor to write the letter to the editor of an academic journal (described above) critiquing a paper the journal had published by Prause & Pfaus. Below are snapshots from TIME‘s email to Gabe. They include the email intro and the allegation from Prause, but omit other, unrelated questions:
The Intro to the email:
The last of many questions in the email:
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Richard A. Isenberg, a medical doctor and author of multiple academic papers, specializing in Uro-Gynecology, is the one who wrote the critique (A letter to the editor), which was published in “Sexual Medicine Open Access,” the same journal that published Nicole Prause and Jim Pfaus’s paper, “Viewing Sexual Stimuli Associated with Greater Sexual Responsiveness, Not Erectile Dysfunction.” Since Gabe also wrote a critique of the same paper, Prause appears to be accusing Gabe of writing Isenberg’s critique as well! More astonishing still, Prause claimed that UCLA had traced the Isenberg critique to Gabe Deem’s computer. Of course, no evidence was supplied to back up any of these unbelievable assertions.
How likely is it that UCLA would hack the computers of men recovering from porn-induced ED? The thing that makes Prause’s claim about UCLA particularly unstable is that Isenberg’s Letter to the Editor was published 6 months after UCLA did not renew Prause’s employment contract – and yet she claims UCLA was engaging in cyber-espionage on her behalf! All this reveals just how far Prause is willing to go. And unlike much of her unscrupulous behavior this attempt at defamation is documented by a third party (TIME magazine’s staff).
Others – June, 2016: Prause and her sock puppet PornHelps claim respected neuroscientists are members of “anti-porn groups” and “their science is bad”
As usual her claims are preposterous. First, it’s an excellent study, now formally published despite all the incomprehensible resistance. Second, its authors received first prize for this very research at the European Society for Sexual Medicine conference in 2016. Third, the authors have no affiliation with Prause’s imaginary “anti-porn groups” (which Prause never names).
For example, the lead author is Dr. Mateusz Gola, who is visiting scholar at UC San Diego, and has 71 publications to his name. Another author is Marc Potenza MD, PhD, of Yale University, who is considered by many to be one of the world’s preeminent addiction researchers (way out of Prause’s league). A PubMed search returns over 460 studies by Dr. Potenza.
As Matuesz Gola explained to “PornHelps” in the comments section, BioRxiv (where Prause found it) exists for pre-publication papers, and functions to elicit feedback from researchers in order to improve papers. It should be noted that the “pornhelps” comments and Prause’s tweet appeared at the same time. Do the following pornhelps comments sound like porn industry shill or a researcher:
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It’s clear that Prause as herself, and as pornhelps, is disturbed by any neurological study lending scientific support to the porn addiction model (all do). But there’s more to this story. Matuesz Gola also published a formal critique of Prause et al., 2015, which explained that Prause’s findings align with two established addiction models (8 peer-reviewed papers agree with Gola) – contradicting Prause’s claim (that she had disproved (or, as she likes to say publicly, “falsified”) the addiction model with her single paper).
Update – Prause confirms what we already knew – that she is pornhelps. @pornhelps later states “I have 15 years studying as neuroscientist”:
Prause, a Kinsey grad, calls herself a neuroscientist, and appears to have started college about 15 years before this tweet. More on @pornhelps here. (Update – @pornhelps later deleted its twitter account and website when it became apparent to others that Prause often tweeted with this account, commented as pornhelps, and helped with the website)
Others – July, 2016: Prause & David Ley attack NoFap founder Alexander Rhodes.
Prause did not name Wilson, so she may be off the hook, legally speaking. All claims are false as Wilson has 1) never been contacted by the police, 2) never threatened her lab, 3) is not under any “no-contact order” except threats from Prause herself after Prause harassed him. This tweet once again incriminates Prause as the individual responsible for the many defamatory comments described in the first section. Prause ended it all as she usually does: citing no evidence and tweeting Rhodes “I sent you documentation. Do not contact me again.” That’s Nicole Prause’s MO: Initiate a personal attack, follow it up with lies, then end it all by playing the victim. By the way, Prause sent no such documentation. Yet another lie. Others were watching the Twitter storm, which led to an article detailing it, and more Prause tweets attacking yet another person (below). Meanwhile, consider the fact that it is a violation of APA (American Psychological Association) principles for psychologists to attack those trying to recover.
July 2016 wasn’t the first time Prause defamed and harassed Alex Rhodes. On May 30, 2016 Prause went so far as to falsely accuse an anonymous quora account of being Alexander Rhodes and thus holding a “trademark”. The Quora account was not Rhodes. Here she posts 3 bizarre comments:
Over the next few months Prause takes every opportunity to belittle and attack Alexander, NoFap.com, and men recovering from porn addiction:
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Prause and Ley referring to the TIME article, thus Gabe Deem and Alex Rhodes
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In this out of the blue May, 2018 tweet attacking Nofap, Prause cited an opinion piece in the journal “Sexualities” falsely stating that the article had “shown by science to denigrate women”.
Others – July, 2016: Prause falsely accuses @PornHelp.org of harassment, libel, and promoting hate
The day after the above Alexander Rhodes/Nicole Prause dustup, @PornHelpdotorg published a blog post detailing the events: “Reflections on a Twitter Skirmish,” and tweeted it to Rhodes, Prause, and David Ley. This set off another Twitter conversation, which you can read in entirety here (prause has delted all herPrause’s first response once again claims documentation:
Once again, Prause performs her usual dance: Start with false unsupported claims. When asked to support the claims, she cannot. Finally, Prause resorts to legal threats, instead of the requested documentation or examples (because she has nothing). As always, she end with “do not contact me” – then later falsely states that she has a “no-contact order”, even though there is no such thing.
Others – July, 2016: Prause & her alias “PornHelps” attack Alexander Rhodes, falsely claiming he faked porn-induced sexual problems
Evidence points to Prause sharing the @pornhelps twitter account and using the PornHelps disqus username. As described above, Prause published (then deleted) a bizarre tweet about this Matuesz Gola study. PornHelps simultaneously commented under the Gola study using the jargon of a researcher. In addition, the following @pornhelps tweets arise from Los Angeles, where Prause lives. (Update – @pornhelps later deleted their twitter account and website as it became apparent that Prause often tweeted with this account)
This was followed by @pornhelps calling both Alexander and Belinda liars. @NicoleRPrause eventually chimed in to call TIME journalist Luscombe a liar (more in the next section). The back and forth contains too many tweets to post here, but most can be found in these threads: Thread 1, Thread 2, Thread 3. Below is a sampling of @pornhelps’s unstable-sounding tweets falsely claiming that Alexander faked his story of porn-induced sexual problems:
@luscombeland @nytimes “Brave”? Faking a problem to promote his business? You failed to verify any part of his story
@GoodGuypervert @luscombeland exaggerating makes them money, esp in his case. These guys are mostly unemployed, no college…got $$$ somehow
@AlexanderRhodes & @luscombeland are creating fake panic to sell their wares. Disgusting.
@AlexanderRhodes @luscombeland @GoodGuypervert uh-oh, he’s gone full ad-hominem BC he got caught faking to make money off young scared men.
@AlexanderRhodes @luscombeland @GoodGuypervert then I await your proof that any of your claims actually happened to you, fake profiteer.
Pornhelps responds, seeing if a lie will stick: “I heard you got blackballed for false reporting”. Eventually Prause’s “NicoleRPrause” Twitter account chimes in calling Luscombe a liar (below). Hmm…how did @NicoleRPrause know about this Twitter thread? Another bit of evidence suggesting Nicole Prause masqueraded as @pornhelps.
In the Ley interview Prause claims to have unpublished data falsifying any connection between “porn addiction” and penile injures (Prause also said she will never publish the data). It’s important to know that both Prause and Pornhelps had been saying that Alexander lied about his masturbation-induced penile injury and porn-induced sexual problems.
Is it any coincidence that 3 days after multiple @pornhelps tweets called Alexander a liar, Ley and Prause publish a Psychology Today blog post directed at one of Alexander’s complaints (that he injured his penis from excessive masturbation)? Interestingly, their own data apparently showed that a fifth of those surveyed had experienced similar injuries. But again, Prause refuses to publish the data, while claiming her data somehow (inexplicably) prove that Alexander must be a liar. In any case Prause’s blog claims remain unsupported as she did not assess “porn addiction” or compulsive porn use in her subjects (read the comments section of Ley’s post).
Others – July, 2016: Nicole Prause & “PornHelps” falsely accuse TIME editor Belinda Luscombe of lying and misquoting
Luscombe has been with TIME Magazine since 1995, becoming a senior editor in 1999. (See her Wikipedia page and her TIME page.) Luscombe spent a year investigating porn-induced sexual problems in young men, which resulted in the March, 31, 2016 TIME cover story “Porn and the Threat to Virility.” Both Prause and Ley have attacked the TIME article, even though both were featured in it and quoted (minimally).
Unfortunately for the public, usually Prause and Ley are the only “experts” featured in most mainstream porn-addiction articles, while the true addiction neuroscientists and their work are not even acknowledged to exist. Not this time. Two world renowned neuroscientists, who have published fMRI studies on porn users, were interviewed for the TIME article. So was a urologist, as well as several young men who have recovered from porn-induced erectile dysfunction. Put simply, the TIME article was more carefully researched than any other article on this subject, and its content reflected both reality and the (then) current state of the science. Since then, even more support for the possible link between internet porn use and sexual dysfunctions has come out in the peer-reviewed literature.
In response to Belinda’s earlier tweet (pictured above) about working the story for a year, we have @pornhelps, tweeting the following:
Pornhelps is psychic: she knows “for fact” how long Belinda worked on the story. Ten minutes later Prause tweets claiming Belinda misquoted her and “lied about her sources”:
As always, Prause provides no examples and no documentation. Not being tagged, how did Prause know about Belinda’s tweet or @pornhelp’s reply? Maybe Prause is psychic too?
Reality Check: It is Prause and @Pornhelps who are lying. As many can verify, Luscombe contacted Gary Wilson, Gabe Deem, Alexander Rhodes, Noah Church, David Ley, and others, during the year before the TIME cover story was published. In addition, Luscombe and several TIME Magazine fact-checkers contacted each individual several times to corroborate each interviewee’s claims.
We know that Wilson’s former employers were contacted, as were the girlfriends of the men with porn-induced sexual problems. Interviewees were also asked to deny or confirm claims given to TIME by David Ley and Nicole Prause. This was done in writing, often 2-3 times for each claim.
For example, Nicole Prause falsely claimed to TIME magazine that Gabe Deem masqueraded as a medical doctor to write this peer-reviewed critique of Prause & Pfaus 2015 (in fact written by a medical doctor/researcher). Even more astonishingly, Prause told TIME that UCLA had traced the “Richard A. Isenberg MD” critique (Letter to the Editor) to the young man’s computer. This outlandish attempt to defame Deem is all documented above.
No one responds to feed the troll. More examples of Prause’s acknowledged twitter account continuing to attack TIME and Belinda:
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Update (April, 2019): Prause and David Ley attack & libel Luscombe (and Wilson)
On April 1, 2019, both Gary Wilson and Belinda Luscombe weighed in on a long twitter thread discussing validity of the General Social Survey (which claimed that only 45% of men, aged 18-29, had viewed an X-rated movie in the last year). Within a few minutes Prause joined the tread to attack and libel Luscombe and Wilson (long-time Prause ally David Ley also libeled Wilson). In her first of 8 tweets, Prause repeats the same lies documented on this page. She also calls Belinda a fake journalist, engaging fraud.
Since Prause has blocked Belinda, Ley jumps in to “paraphrase” (but omits Prause’s attacks on Belinda). Belinda responds:
David Ley joins in with 2 of his own lies: That Wilson was a TA (teacher assistant) and he was fired.
Truth doesn’t stop Ley or Prause from continuing their Twitter libel-fest, attacking Belinda Luscombe and Wilson.
All provable libel:
Wilson did not drop out of college.
Wilson did not default on his student loans.
Wilson was not a TA. He was ‘Adjunct Faculty.’ (How could Wilson be a TA if he was not attending SOU as a student?)
On December 15, 2019 the most comprehensive, research-based article yet on porn’s effects was published by Pascal Gobry: A Science-Based Case for Ending the Porn Epidemic. RealYBOP and Nicole Prause responded with 90 rambling tweets consisting of personal attacks, ad hominem, false accusations – yet nothing specific about the article. Belinda Luscombe can relate:
Despite claiming that she is “not a science writer,” she continues to try to cover scientific topics. This often results in required retractions by the scientists then forced to clean up her poor writing.
The above comment was reversed the next day by another Wikipedia editor. Without checking this user’s other comments, it’s evident that this was likely done by Nicole Prause. Moreover, an investigation of this user’s only other 3 Wikipedia edits erases all doubt that this is Prause’s handiwork:
Only Nicole Prause would have made theses edits, especially the last 3:
“Largest neuro study mysteriously left off previous edits.” This is referring to Prause et al., 2015, which is the study that only Prause boasts (inaccurately) is the largest neurological study on porn addicts. No one else calls her EEG study the “largest study” because: 1) Many of Prause’s subjects were not really porn addicts; 2) two other neurological studies assessed greater numbers of subjects.
“Removing pseudoscience by Gary Wilson.” Who else would (falsely) accuse Gary Wilson in a Wikipedia edit? In the section below we reveal other Prause Wikipedia sock puppets who attack Gary Wilson, including a sock puppet with the user name “NotGaryWilson.”
This vicious failed attack on veteran TIME editor Belinda Luscombe for doing her job well (and giving short shrift to Prause’s “alternative facts”) is classic Prause vindictiveness. (PDF of Nicole Prause aliases she used to harass & defame).
Others – September 2016: Prause attacks and libels former UCLA colleague Rory C. Reid PhD. 2 years earlier “TellTheTruth” posted the exact same claims & documents on a porn recovery site frequented by Prause’s sock puppets.
On September 15th, 2016 Nicole Prause posted a fake press release on the website PROLOG. Prause’s “press release” attacked and libeled several individuals including Gary Wilson, Donald Hilton MD, Utah state senator Todd Weiler, and Dr. Todd Love. This is what remains of the press release, as ProLog removed the content 2 days later because it violated their policies. Not to be denied, Prause placed the press release’s content on her AmazonAWS account. Links to the Rory Reid related documents Prause uploaded to her AmazonAWS site:
“Psychologist” and “LCSW” are both regulated titles licensed with the state of California that Rory Reid was using to advertise his services to patients but did not actually possess. Rory Reid also has falsely described that he attended and is on faculty at Harvard University and is an “assistant professor” at UCLA. Reid was never faculty at Harvard University and is an adjunct, not tenure track faculty, at UCLA. Reid is listed as a full-time employee of the State of California’s Office of Problem Gambling at UCLA, so it is unclear how Reid would be able to study sex films and contact politicians about sex films without violating his state contract.
A little background on Rory Reid and former UCLA researcher Nicole Prause is useful here. Rory Reid has been a research psychologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA since before Nicole Prause’s brief stint at UCLA began in 2013. Reid’s research areas are hypersexuality and gambling addiction.
Reid, like Prause, has often argued against the existence of “sex addiction.” Reid stated in a 2013 article that his office was right next door to Prause’s at UCLA. In 2013 Nicole Prause listed Rory Reid as a member of her “SPAN Lab.” As stated, Prause’s UCLA contract was not renewed while Reid remains a researcher at UCLA. Whatever he did to displease her, Prause is now attacking a former colleague publicly and brutally.
But there’s more to the story. Twenty months earlier, in December 5th, 2014 several comments mirroring Prause’s “press release” (urging readers to report Rory Reid to California authorities) were posted on the porn recovery site YourBrainRebalanced by a brand new member. As we saw above, Prause made a habit of commenting on YBR using various aliases. (PDF of Nicole Prause aliases she used to harass & defame). The first of these comments, by TellTheTruth, contained 2 links. One link went to a PDF on Scribd with supposed evidence supporting TellTheTruth’s claims (Prause regularly use aliases with 2-4 capitalized words as usernames).
Two more comments by TellTheTruth that mirror Nicole Prause’s “press release” (now) published nearly 2 years later.
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The TellTheTruth comments and PDF from December, 2014 along with the Prause’s press release incriminate Nicole Prause as cyberstalking Rory Reid at about the time that UCLA chose not renew her contract! Coincidence?
Key point: The documents that Prause placed on her AmazonAWS account about Reid are the same documents that TellTheTruth placed on YourBrainRebalanced 2 years earlier. Note the same “2013 copyright State of California” for Prause’s current screenshot and TellTheTruth’s 2-year old screenshot:
Prause’s current document: https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/weilerdefamation/NoLicenseInCalifornia.png (note the URL in this screenshot & the 2013 copyright)
TellTheTruth’s document she posted 2 years earlier on the porn recovery forum YourBrainRebalanced. Notice the 2013 copyright and how TellThe Truth pasted Reid’s picture into her PDF:
Here’s why we know TellTheTruth was Nicole Prause: The current license search has a 2016 copyright notice! Prause was harassing and cyberbullying her UCLA colleague Rory Reid in December, 2014 (about the time she was leaving UCLA), and she’s still using the same screen shots to do it.
Here’s another another example of duplicate documents by Prause-2016 and TellTheTruth-2014. Prause’s current AmazonAWS document – https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/weilerdefamation/BevHillsClinicalPractice_ClaimsLCSW.png
Incidentally, it looks like Nicole Prause “stole” Rory Reid’s picture and placed on a website without his permission. Should he file a police report? And here’s TellTheTruth’s document from December, 2014. You can see from the URL stamp and heading that this was a PDF on SCRIBD:
Same documents, same claims, same spinning of the truth by both Prause and TellTheTruth. Here’s the Key point: Rory Reid is still a researcher at UCLA while Prause’s contract at UCLA was not renewed.
One has to ask why UCLA would willingly part with an up-and-coming researcher able to (1) debunk entire fields of science with a single study (in this case, the field of porn addiction research), and (2) persuade the media she has done so. Things are not always what they seem.
September, 2016: Prause libels Gary Wilson and others with Amazon AWS documents (which Prause tweeted dozens of times)
Back to the September 15th, 2016 fake press release Nicole Prause posted on the website PROLOG. Prause’s “press release” also attacked and libeled several individuals including Gary Wilson, Donald Hilton MD, Utah state senator Todd Weiler, and Dr. Todd Love. Again, this is what remains of the press release, as ProLog removed the content 2 days later because it violated their policies. Not to be denied, Prause placed the press release’s content on her AmazonAWS account (Amazon refuses to arbitrate content disputes). Since September 15, Prause has tweeted dozens of times about her document. Here we examine Prause’s comments about Gary Wilson.
Prause said: Dr. Prause had to file a police report and close and hide her UCLA laboratory under threat from this blogger and now requires physical protection at all her public talks from him. He has since been spotted in Los Angeles near the scientist’s home and LAPD threat management has been alerted.
Closed her Lab? Armed guards? Spotted near her home? All this because YBOP critiqued her 2013 EEG study? All these claims are untrue, and the claim that “Wilson has been spotted seen near the scientist’s home” is also fiction. Wilson hasn’t been to LA in years. A call to the Los Angeles police and the UCLA campus police revealed no police report about Wilson in either system. That is the only fact here.
Prause said: He wrote the UCLA chancellor over a dozen times claiming Prause had faked her data, faked her title, and more, all of which UCLA refuted.
False. Wilson wrote (or copied) the chancellor 3 times in late 2013 and early 2014 to complain about Prause’s ongoing harassment. The first letter informed UCLA about Prause’s multiple instances of harassment, frivolous legal threats and libel targeting Wilson and two others. This letter also documented Prause’s intimidation of Psychology Today editors (who acquiesced and removed Wilson’s critique and a critique by two other Psychology Today bloggers (both experts)). In one paragraph Wilson described how Prause misrepresented the finding of Steele et al., 2013 to the press. Eight peer-reviewed papers have since supported Wilson’s assertion: Peer-reviewed critiques of Steele et al., 2013. Nowhere did Wilson say that Prause had “faked her data” or “faked her title.” Both Wilson and UCLA possess the original letters. Their content proves that Prause is libeling Wilson.
Wilson sent a second letter to UCLA (December 2, 2013) to complain about Prause placing a document libeling Wilson on the SPAN lab website (as described above). It was assumed that UCLA controlled the content as each SPAN Lab page contained the following:
Reproduced below are the first several paragraphs of Wilson’s letter to UCLA Chancellor Block:
Two weeks later a letter was sent to Vice Dean Jonathan R. Hiatt to inform him that Prause’s libelous PDF remained. Shortly thereafter the PDF was removed, although no official response was received until March, 2014. The Vice Dean informed Wilson that the SPAN Lab website was Prause’s own site, and not a UCLA website at all(!). Reproduced below is a portion of UCLA’s response to Gary Wilson’s letter:
So Wilson did not “write the UCLA chancellor over a dozen times.” This can be confirmed by UCLA. We must state again that Prause not only personally attacked Wilson, but attacked UCLA colleague Rory Reid PhD (see above section). UCLA did not renew Prause’s contract.
Prause said: He also broke into her private online account to stalk her after receiving a no-contact order. He stole her personal photos from that account, posted them to his porn website, then migrated them to try to evade DMCA take downs until his ISP threatened to shutter his website.
Addendum: Prause is now claiming in an AmazonAWS PDF that Wilson migrated the picture of Prause (and the associated article) to other servers. This is 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 Wilson’s ISP told him that they “would close his website if he did it a fourth time”. This did not occur.
Prause said: Her name appears over 1,350 times on one website alone of an obsessed blogger.
This claim may actually be true. The website Prause is referring to is this one: YourBrainOnPorn.com. Approximately 700 of the 1,350 mentions are on this page alone. Why would YourBrainOnPorn.com contain an alleged additional 650 instances of “Prause”? YBOP contains about 13,000 pages, and it’s a clearinghouse for nearly everything associated with Internet porn use and its effects on the user. Nicole Prause has published multiple studies about porn use and hypersexuality, and by her own admission, is a professional debunker of porn addiction and porn-induced sexual problems.
A Google search for “Nicole Prause” + pornography returns about 13,000 pages. She’s quoted in hundreds of journalistic articles about porn use and porn addiction. She has published several papers related to pornography use. She’s on TV, radio, podcasts, and YouTube channels claiming to have debunked porn addiction with a single (heavily criticized) study. So Prause’s name inevitably shows up a lot on a site functioning as a clearinghouse for research and news associated with Internet porn’s effects.
Not only are Prause’s studies on YBOP, so are hundreds of other studies, many of which cite Prause in their reference sections. YBOP also has published very long critiques of 8 Prause papers. YBOP contains at least 18 peer-reviewed critiques of Prause’s studies. YBOP contains at least a dozen lay critiques of Prause’s work. YBOP contains many journalistic articles that quote Nicole Prause, and YBOP often responds to Prause’s claims in these articles. YBOP also debunks many of the talking points put forth by Prause and her close ally David Ley. Finally, YBOP members comment here asking about Prause’s studies or her claims in the media. However, YBOP also critiques other questionable research on porn and related subjects. These critiques are not personal, but rather substantive (see update).
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 this 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. She has even been known to tweet combinations of misogyny claims and claims that (legitimate, peer-reviewed) science with which she disagrees is “fake.” Any suggestion that Wilson, Deem or Rhodes are motivated by misogyny is fabricated, as their 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.
The info-graphic also claims that Alexander Rhodes is sexist because he defended Wilson against Prause’s libelous claims that “Wilson was recently seen outside Prause’s residence.” When did the refutation of lies become misogyny? (Update: NoFap founder Alexander Rhodes defamation lawsuit against Nicole Prause)
If YBOP is truly sexist why are the majority of the authors we critique men? This page lists the studies and papers YBOP has critiqued.
The total number of authors listed on all the papers: 56
Male authors: 42
Female authors: 14
Once again, facts debunk propaganda.
Finally, no one named on this page – whom Prause has accused of sexism and misogyny – endorses, or encourages, either. Speak with them and you will discover that the very opposite is true. All support the respectful treatment of women. Their issue with Prause is with her tactics and her unsupported claims about her research, not with her as a woman or a woman scientist.
Others – Prause falsely accuses Donald Hilton Jr., MD
Curious about Prause’s claim that Don Hilton, MD, “called her a child molester,” we contacted Dr. Hilton. Here is his response:
With regard to Prause’s claim, the facts are presented here. I did not call her a child molester.
About 6 or 7 years ago I spoke in 3 Idaho cities in one day for a group called Citizens for Decency. I spoke on evidence supporting an addictive model related to problematic porn use, which was mainly molecular biology at that point. This model has since been substantiated by structural and functional MRI studies.
At the end of my talk a young woman came up and basically said that she did not think there was any evidence supporting the addiction model. I only learned later that it was Nicole Prause, who was then employed in Idaho. Next, she said she had trained at the Kinsey Institute, implying that she was an expert on sexuality.
I asked her if she supported the research and methodology of the namesake of her institution, Alfred Kinsey. I explained to her that Kinsey had collaborated with pedophiles, and trained and instructed them to time with stopwatches how long it took children they molested to reach orgasm. I asked her if she supported Kinsey and his methodology. At that point she became hostile.
Her claim that I said she was a child molester is untrue; I didn’t know her, her name, or anything about her other than that she admired Kinsey. My point was that the person she considered her philosophical mentor had knowingly collaborated with child molesters. This is perfectly true. Attached is attached a copy of Table 34 from the Kinsey book on male sexuality published in 1948 [reproduced below]. The youngest child is 5 months old, and is described as having 3 orgasms. Note that most sessions are timed.
Incidentally, Paul Gebhard (coauthor of Kinsey’s female sexuality book published a few years after the male book), was interviewed by J.Gordon Muir years later. This is an excerpt from the interview:
Muir: “So, do pedophiles normally go around with stopwatches?”
Gebhard: “Ah, they do if we tell them we’re interested in it!”
Kinsey, Pomeroy (an early president of AASECT), Gebhard, and others worked with 2 child molesters, Rex King and a Nazi named Fritz Ballusek. Ballusek’s trial is well documented, but King was never caught. An example of the collaboration is from a letter on Nov 24, 1944 from Kinsey to King:
“I rejoice at everything you send, for I am then assured that that much more of your material is saved for scientific publication.”
Kinsey also warned his pedophiles to be careful not to be caught. For documentation, see Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences, whose author confirmed to me that she has the original tapes of the phone interview in her archives.
Although I did not call Nicole Prause a child molester, I did ask her then, and I ask her now, if she condones or refutes the collaboration of Kinsey, his coauthors, and the Kinsey Institute with child molesters. I am still waiting for her answer.
In 2019, leading sexology journal Archives of Sexual Behavior published a rare open-access piece about sexual harassment in the field of sexology, acknowledging Kinsey’s misdeeds:
Some of Kinsey’s biographies also included accounts of sexual behavior occurring between members of the research team (and their spouses) and highlight how some may have at times felt maneuvered into such sexual behaviors (Gathorne-Hardy, 1998; Jones, 1997). We feel that the Kinsey team’s inclusion of reports about infant and child genital response provided by one or more adults is especially egregious and concerning, for its time and ours. (emphasis supplied)
YBOP comments: Once again Nicole Prause has been caught in a lie.
Dr. Prause is obsessed with Dr. Hilton because he dared to critique the claims she made about her 2013 EEG study (Steele et al., 2013). Prause touted in the media that her study provided evidence against the existence of porn/sex addiction. Not so. Steele et al. 2013 actually lent support to the existence of both porn addiction and porn use down-regulating sexual desire. How so? The study reported higher EEG readings (relative to neutral pictures) when subjects were briefly exposed to pornographic photos. Studies consistently show that an elevated P300 occurs when addicts are exposed to cues (such as images) related to their addiction.
In line with the Cambridge University brain scan studies, this EEG study also reported greater cue-reactivity to porn correlating with less desire for partnered sex. To put it another way – individuals with greater brain activation to porn would rather masturbate to porn than have sex with a real person. Shockingly, study spokesperson 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 expose the truth: Peer-reviewed critiques of Steele et al., 2013
Key point: Prause was given full opportunity by the journal to formally respond to Hilton’s critique. She declined. Instead, Prause attacked Hilton on social media and defamed him in emails.
Below are a few examples of Prause posting her lies on social media. Prause created a slide (naming Hilton, Gary Wilson, Marnia Robinson, Nofap, Alexander Rhodes) “proving” everyone she doesn’t like is “misogynist,” and continues to tweet it repeatedly to this day (maybe 40-50 times… so far):
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Notice how Prause tagged her friends at AVN (Adult Video Network, a porn producers interest group) in her tweet where she claimed that Dr. Hilton “screamed that she experimented on children”:
If Hilton screamed at Prause, why are Prause & Hilton pictured having a friendly discussion after the talk Prause attended?
In 2017 Prause tweeted the following about Dr. Hilton’s 2013 critique, while falsely stating that her Lancet commentary addressed criticisms put forth in the 5 peer-reviewed papers:
Dr. Prause even resorted to posting on IMDB to attack Dr. Hilton:
While Prause claims the film contained “misrepresentations and falsehoods about the science”, she couldn’t name any. Not one. She never does. Look at all of Prause’s tweets, Quora posts, Facebook comments, or even her two op-ed’s. She never provides any specific examples of misrepresentations. No excerpts from a study. No quote from the offender. Prause’s prime tactics are ad hominem and other defamation.
As always, Prause lied in the above comment. The journal in question is not predatory – and it’s the same journal that published her own 2013 EEG study – Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology:
June 1, 2019: Ley disparages Don Hilton. Ley links to an unprofessional and scientifically inacurate article by Daniel Burgess, a close ally of Prause and Ley:
Burgess has also defamed and harassed Gary Wilson on social media – regurgitating Prause’s usual set of lies. Burgess was kicked off the “Marriage and Family Therapists” Facebook group for defaming Wilson in this thread – also see the 15 replies to Burgess by Staci Sprout and Forest Benedict.By the way, the Burgess commentary on a few out-of-context excerpts from a 2010 Hilton book for the lay public is laughable. For example, Burgess attacks Hilton for saying there are two major sources of dopamine in the brain: one that is affected by Parkinson’s disease; the other is primarily affected by addiction. Revealing his ignorance, Burgess says Hilton is mistaken!
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June 3, 2019: Prause’s alter ego and very active pro-porn twitter account, RealYBOP joins Ley in a weak attempt at disparaging Hilton. RealYBOP tweets 3 screenshots from a 2011 reply to a February 2011, Hilton & Watts paper: Pornography addiction: A neuroscience perspective.
Commentary on the above:
First, Rory Reid’s snarky commentary and the Hilton & Watts reply to Reid are on this same page.
Second, Rory Reid was Nicole Prause’s (RealYBOP) roommate in LA, and played a role in her being hired by UCLA.
November 14, 2019: On the same day, Prause alias @BrainOnPorn tweets about Hilton’s appearance on a CBS show about pornography:
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November 19, 2019: RealYBOP disparages Don Hilton, MD. (He was the so-called “religious physician” in the CBS segment about porn, but he sticks to the science and never makes religiosity part of his public talks. Only his critics do.)
December 31, 2019: Cyberstalking Gabe Deem (who has blocked RealYBOP) on New Years Eve, RealYBOP tweets defamation and PDF’s of her defamatory motion to dismiss:
December 31, 2019: RealYBOP trolls under Gary Wilson (even though I blocked her and she blocked me), tweeting about Hilton & Watts, 2011 – again, and completely out of context:
December 31, 2019: In a truly bizarre event, @BrainOnPorn twitter (apparently managed Prause) changed its home page to superimpose Rory Reid’s unpersuasive commentary on Hilton & Watts, 2011:
All the above expose Prause as a relentless harasser/cyberstalker
2020 – Using her RealYBOP twitter account she attcks a metaphor by sex addiction therapist Paula Hall. Just more cybertsalking.
Ley and RealYBOP again:
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Others – October, 2016: Prause commits perjury attempting to silence Alexander Rhodes of NoFap
As described above Prause has a history of personally attacking Alexander Rhodes (it is always Prause who initiates the harassment with her tweets). For example, (again) here’s Prause (on a thread she initiated) claiming that Alexander Rhodes lied about experiencing porn-induced sexual problems:
@YourBrainOnPorn@JamesTherapy How did you get to another state so quickly to stalk? You also behind all of the mysterious clown sightings?
Key point: The above tweet no longer contains this picture of a man hiding in the bushes, which was used under the copyright “fair use” exclusion because it is evident the image’s purpose was for meme/parody:
As Alexander Rhodes describes in subsequent tweets, Nicole Prause falsely claimed ownership of the “man in the bush” picture and filed a bogus DMCA takedown request via Twitter. In doing so Prause committed perjury.Rhodes tweets the evidence:
UPDATE – January, 2018: In response, Alexander Rhodes eventually sent in a counter notice, explaining to Twitter Inc. that as Dr. Nicole Prause is not the copyright holder or an authorized representative of the copyright holder, inconsistent with what she falsely asserted in the DMCA take-down notice sent to Twitter, the copyright infringement notice was baseless. In response, Twitter gave Dr. Prause a window of opportunity to respond to Rhodes’s counter-notice, in which she did not. While Twitter Inc. said that they would reinstate the censored tweet, the image has yet to reappear as of January 2018, despite the copyright decision being reversed. This demonstrates that while Alexander Rhodes and NoFap LLC successfully provided a legal argument against Prause’s censorship, she still was successfully able to permanently remove an image posted on Twitter through perjury without any tangible repercussions for breaking the law.
An earlier and significantly different version of this paper was first submitted in March, 2015 to the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine for possible inclusion in its “Addiction” issue. Normal procedure is for the journal to have two academics review a paper to provide commentary and criticism. Key point #2: This paper was the only place Wilson’s affiliation with the Reward Foundation could be found outside of Foundation personnel. In other words, only the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine editor and the two reviewers knew about this affiliation.
In April, 2015 an email by someone using a fake name (“Janey Wilson”) was sent to The Reward Foundation and to the organization housing several charities, including The Reward Foundation:
On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 9:21 AM, Janey Wilson <[email protected]> wrote:
I now have documentation that Gary Wilson himself is claiming to be a member of the Reward Foundation. While he is not listed on the new website page, this represents a rather worse transgression…. [Reward Foundation personnel] may not even be aware he is making these claims, I am not sure, but he has now made them publicly.
Key Point #3: Only one of two reviewers of the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine submission could have sent this email (Prause later self-identified as one of the two reviewers). The information was not public, but only made available to the journal.
Around the time that “Janey” (1) wrote The Reward Foundation to tell it about my “false” claim of affiliation, and (2) reported the charity itself to the Scottish Charity Regulator, “Janey” also wrote the Edinburgh organization where the charity is domiciled with false claims about me and The Reward Foundation. The Edinburgh entity is called “The Melting Pot.” It’s an umbrella organization that hosts various small enterprises. They contained the now familiar personal attacks on Wilson (described above), and even threats of legal action. No one took the bizarre rantings and unsupported claims seriously and “Janey” would not supply proof of her identity. “Janey” apparently simultaneously posted about this on the redddit/pornfree porn recovery forum – Gary Wilson is profiting from YBOP:
The above is hardly surprising as Prause has employed many sock-puppet identities to post, primarily on porn-recovery forums, about Wilson. For example hundreds of comments by Prause’s apparent avatars can be found at the links below. And, they are but an incomplete collection:
Another reddit/pornfree post that appeared about the same time (Prause deleted her sockpuppet’s username, as she often did after posting):
Janey/Prause made the irrational claim that I was “paying off” The Reward Foundation for a TEDx talk opportunity that occurred years earlier, in 2012. It had been arranged in 2011, years before the charity was conceived of or organized. Obviously, no such subterfuge was needed. I had the right to give my book proceeds to anyone at any point, or put them in my pocket. I chose the Reward Foundation because I respect its balanced, educational objective.
Neither organization (the Scottish Charity Regulator nor the Melting Pot) responded to “Janey,” as she offered no evidence, and wouldn’t identify herself, claiming “whistleblower status” (although, of course, she wasn’t an employee of either, and was not under threat). Had the charity not had a strong, respected relationship with the Melting Pot, and had it already been required to file financial statements with the Scottish Charity Regulator, “Janey’s” malicious claims might have done a lot of damage to the charity’s reputation and initiated a time-consuming, costly audit, etc.
In late 2016, Prause outed herself as “Janey Wilson” when she demanded (repeatedly and unsuccessfully) that Dan Hind of Commonwealth Publishing confirm my connection with the Scottish charity called The Reward Foundation to Prause in writing. Copying both MDPI (the ultimate publisher of the paper discussed earlier) and a publication ethics organization (COPE), Prause told Commonwealth’s Hind that he had already written her to this effect.
However, the only correspondence Hind had with anyone on the subject of Wilson and The Reward Foundation was with “Janey,” and he has stated this in writing. Thus, Prause has now outed herself as the former “Janey.” When Hind didn’t respond to Prause’s repeated demands, she then demanded the information via Commonwealth’s web designer – accompanied, as usual, by defamation and threat:
You may wish to encourage the site content owner that you designed to clarify that his author was caught claiming to “donate” proceeds from a book that actually went into his own pocket. Mr. Hind has failed to respond to inquiries with the Committee on Publication Ethics. I assume you would not want your name entangled in fraud like this in any way.
Prause seems to believe that the fact that my share of book proceeds goes to a Scottish registered charity, which I listed as my affiliation for purposes of two academic papers published in 2016, means that I am somehow pocketing the proceeds (from my own book) – and thus have a conflict of interest, which is purportedly grounds, in her mind, for my paper being retracted. Does any of this make any sense in light of the facts?
In fact, I am not on the Board of the charity, and certainly have no say over the book proceeds it receives as a consequence of my irrevocable donation. Incidentally, my affiliation is now public, as it is mentioned in both papers I published in 2016. In short, there is nothing hidden or improper going on, and no conflict of interest whatsoever – despite Prause’s claims behind the scenes and publicly.
The following sections of this page provide examples of Prause and “pornhelps” simultaneously attacking and defaming some of Prause’s favorites targets (men who run porn-recovery forums, porn addiction researchers, TIME editor Belinda Luscombe, who wrote a cover story Prause didn’t approve of):
The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine was informed of this behavior (apparently engaged in by one of their two reviewers). When it was suggested that Prause might be behind these bizarre emails and the paper’s initial rejection, the editor didn’t deny it. The paper was promptly accepted…and then not published after all, based on a claim that it was too late to meet the print deadline for YJBM’s “Addiction” issue.
A different, substantially updated version of the paper was then submitted to the journal Behavioral Sciences. After a few rounds of reviews and rewriting it was accepted as a review of the literature. Its final form was quite different from the original YJBM submission. During this process, the paper was reviewed by no fewer than 6 reviewers. Five passed it, some with some suggested revisions, and one harshly rejected it (Prause, again). As part of this process, the authors were given all of the comments by the reviewers (but not their identities). The reviewers’ concerns were thoroughly addressed, point by point.
From these comments, it became evident that the “harsh reviewer” of the Behavioral Sciences paper had also reviewed the paper at YJBM.About a third of the 77 points raised did not relate to the Behavioral Sciences submission at all.They referred to material that was only present in the earlier version of the paper, the one that had been submitted to YJBM. At a much later date, Prause submitted the original YJBM version to a regulatory board (in an effort to have the published paper retracted), thus confirming she was the person behind the many harassing “Janey Wilson” emails.
In the course of her attacks on the paper’s authors, Nicole Prause has violated the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) code of ethics for academic reviewers multiple times. Section 5, in the “Guidelines on Good Publication Practice” PDF (on this page) outlines eight rules for peer reviewers. Nicole Prause has violated at least three COPE’s rules:
(2) The duty of confidentiality in the assessment of a manuscript must be maintained by expert reviewers, and this extends to reviewers’ colleagues who may be asked (with the editor’s permission) to give opinions on specific sections.
Prause broke confidentiality. She used Wilson’s affiliation with The Reward Foundation to harass the officers of the Reward Foundation and to pepper the Scottish Charity Register with false allegations about Wilson.
(3) The submitted manuscript should not be retained or copied.
Prause kept the manuscript and later submitted it to regulatory boards as part of a frivolous demand for retraction. (Apparently, she never realized the paper had been accepted by YJBM once her review was disqualified.)
(4) Reviewers and editors should not make any use of the data, arguments, or interpretations, unless they have the authors’ permission.
Prause used specific content of the YJBM submission as a part her bogus claim to regulatory boards without the authors’ permission.
Update: In May, 2018 Prause falsely claimed to journal publisher MDPI (and others) that, based on the charity’s recent public filing (with a name redacted, as is standard), expense reimbursements paid to a charity officer were in fact paid to me. I forwarded Prause’s claim to Darryl Mead, Chair of The Reward Foundation, who debunked Prause’s claims: See for the documentation.
October, 2016 – Prause publishes her spurious October, 2015 “cease and desist” letter. Wilson responds by publishing his letter to Prause’s lawyer.
On October 15, 2015 Gary Wilson 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 (asking the organization 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 Wilson, reproduced below. Wilson is not a member of SASH or IITAP.
There is no other way to say this: All four claims in the above cease & desist letter are bogus. The most absurd claim is that Wilson said that Prause appeared in porn. Gary Wilson wrote the following letter asking both Prause and the lawyer to provide evidence to support their allegations. Wilson’s letter in full:
In the intervening 6 years neither Prause nor the lawyer have 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 Wilson so that he might remove his critiques of Prause’s studies,
to create a letter she could show her allies as “proof positive” that Wilson is harassing her (even though it is proof of nothing and merely made up),
to produce an “official letter” to show journalists so as to discourage them from contacting Wilson.
October, 2016 – Prause had co-presenter Susan Stiritz “warn campus police” that Gary Wilson might fly 2000 miles to listen to Prause say porn addiction isn’t real
Prause continues to spin a fable that Gary Wilson has threatened to “show up” at one of her talks. This is poppycock. Prause has provided no evidence to support this claim, and Wilson has no desire to hear Prause speak (let alone pay to hear her speak). In mid-October, 2016 Nicole Prause placed the following PDF on AmazonAWS. Prause posted a link to the PDF under a petition to Psychology Today (which was gathering support to ask the organization to reconsider its editorial policy).
While nothing in this message (below) can be verified, it appears to be written by Susan Stiritz. It also appears to be describing Stiritz relaying Prause’s fabricated claim to WU campus patrolman Tim Dennis to the effect that Gary Wilson was planning to attend the AASECT summer institute. Put simply, Wilson was claimed to be planning to fly 2000 miles, pay for 4 nights in a St Louis hotel, and pay over $1000 to AASECT, just to hear Prause and David Ley explain how porn addiction has been “debunked.” Prause even provided a picture of Wilson, which she must have “stolen,” because he didn’t send it to her (reproduced below).
So this is the “proof” that Gary Wilson is dangerous: a made-up tale by Prause, told to a friend, who relayed it to a campus cop 2000 miles from where Wilson lives via message, which Prause now offers as “proof” of Wilson’s evil actions. What’s missing from all of this claptrap is one iota of evidence that hints that Wilson ever indicated that he intended to attend a Prause lecture – or threaten her in any way whatsoever.
While Prause claims Wilson is “dangerous,” the only danger of having Wilson in the audience is that he might, with awkward questions, debunk Prause’s claims by citing more than 3 dozen neurological papers that support the porn addiction model, and 110 studies that link porn use to sexual dysfunctions and lower sexual & relationship satisfaction. That’s the real reason she doesn’t want Wilson attending her lectures. Update: Gary Wilson includes these incidents in an affidavit filed in the Alexander Rhodes defamation lawsuit against Nicole Prause: Exhibit #11: Gary Wilson affidavit (123 pages)
Ongoing – Prause silencing people with fake “no contact” demands and spurious cease & desist letters
Prause has a history of sending 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 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.
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.
To our knowledge, Prause has never obtained a court or regulatory order against any C&D letter recipient. Her aggressive tactics and knowingly false accusations instead appear calculated to bully and intimidate her detractors into silence.
Prause has also used a modified version of this tactic against Rhodes and PornHelp.org, among others by attacking them and their speech online, then if they dare to correct or defend, publicly demanding they “not contact [her] by any means.” If they subsequently dare to correct a falsehood or call her out, she accuses them of violating a “no contact” and threatens to sue. And then, despite her demand, she continues to attack them online in the future.
A number of the C&D letters Prause has posted online or sent are reproduced as images below. Prause placed links to three of her C&D letters on her Amazon AWS pages (C&D 1, C&D 2, C&D 3), presumably so that she could easily link to each in tweets, on Facebook, and in the comment sections under online articles. To repeat: we are not aware of Prause ever acting on any of the aggressive, albeit empty, threats in these letters. We believe they are intimidation tactics, pure and simple. Finally, the recipients of the C&D letters emphatically state that Prause’s lists of wrongdoings were manufactured lies. Anyone can pay an internet-based lawyer to write spurious C&D letters.
Four of the five C&D letters are reproduced below. The 5th C&D letter, and Wilson’s reply to Prause’s lawyer, are in this section.
Linda Hatch PhD
Prause addressed Linda Hatch as “Ms.” instead of “Dr.” in the letter, (an error that Prause has repeatedly insisted is incontrovertible proof of “misogyny”). Note that Prause had her lawyer cruelly copy the editor of a site where Dr. Hatch regularly blogs. Prause posted 4 of the cease & desist letters publicly on amazonaws.com. It’s clear that the bogus C&D letters were meant to “punish” the recipients for thoughtfully critiquing Prause’s flawed studies and challenging Prause’s unsupported claims.
In the above C&D letter Prause claims that Weiss misleadingly stated that Prause no longer has a university affiliation. While there is no evidence that Weiss said this – Prause isn’t affiliated with any university.
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Marnia Robinson, JD
It’s entertaining that Prause accused Robinson of saying that Prause is no longer employed by a university and that her contract with UCLA was not renewed – when both are true. The reality behind Prause’s so-called no-contact request is exposed in the very first section of this page. Since Prause’s April, 2013, no-contact request Prause and her sockpuppets have posted hundreds of libelous comments on social media and elsewhere. In Prause’s twisted world it’s OK for her defame and harass others, but no one is allowed to defend themselves from her abuse.
Ongoing – Prause creates inane “infographics” to disparage & defame numerous individuals and organzations
Prause created two “infographics” in 2016, naming Gary Wilson and YBOP, which she has tweeted dozens of times and posted on Quora and other outlets. The first infographic, kept at the ready on Prause’s Amazon website, is named “Sexism In Neuroscience”. It defames Gary Wilson, Don Hilton, Alex Rhodes and Marnia Robinson by calling all misogynists (It could alos be interperted as calling Don Hilton a child molestor). As already chronicled in an earlier section, above, Prause’s only “proof” is Gary Wilson inadvertently typing “Miss” in his reply to her questions about the size of Wilson’s penis! Prause’s interest in Wilson’s genitals and her creating and several examples of her posting the inane “sexism” infographic are all documented here: December 2013: Prause posts on YourBrainRebalanced & asks Gary Wilson about the size of his penis (kicking off Prause’s campaign of calling Wilson, and many others, misogynists).
The second Prause infographic purports to be a primer on “how to evaluate sex films” (Prause euphemism for pornography). A closer look reveals that Prause is guilty of breaking most of her rules for evaluating sources of information. At the bottom of the infographic she lists 15 websites she wants the reader to believe are sources of “bad information” (sites run by the many individuals and organizations she regularly defames or harasses, as documented on these pages). She also lists two “good” websites and one “good” article. The bottom of Prause’s inane infographic:
Her two “good” websites are AASECT and Justin Lehmillers blog. AASECT is a organization for sex therapists and cites no research on the AASECT website. Justin Lehmiller, a regular paid contributor to Playboy Magazine, and a close ally of Nicole Prause, having featured her in at least ten of his blog posts.
The third “website” is a short article from early 2014 in a magazine, quoting Prause. The article cites only one neurological paper: Prause’s 2013 EEG study, Steele et al., 2013. Prause claimed that she had debunked porn addiction because her porn using subjects’ (1) “brains did not respond like other addicts,” and (2) they really just had “high desire.” Both claims are without support. Neither is reported in Steele et al., 2013. Truth? Eight peer-reviewed analyses of Steele et al. 2013 describe how the Steele et al. findings lend support to the porn addiction model. The 2014 article omitted 43 neuroscience-based studies on porn users and sex addicts (all support the addiction model).
Here we provide examples of Prause posting her”sex films” infographic. She did so multiple times on Quora (before she was permanently banned for harassing Gary Wilson). For example:
As Prause and her twitter alias RealYBOP often do, both troll threads to post their propaganda (this time Matt Fradd):
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In this tweet Prause can’t control her fabricated hyperbole:
Reality: not a single “science group” has ever attempted to debunk www.yourbrainonporn.com. Notice how Prause never provides a single example of so-called “debunking” of YBOP.
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Evan Elliot calls out Prause for bullying and her inability to address substance
Her defamatory tweet linked to grad student Kris Taylor’s dissertation on 15 comments from reddit/nofap: I want that power back: Discourses of masculinity within an online pornography abstinence forum (2018). That’s right, a PhD analyzing 15 reddit comments! Taylor is decidedly pro-porn and anti-Nofap. He has a history of blatantly misrepresenting studies and the state of the research, as chronicled in the YBOP critique: Debunking Kris Taylor’s “A Few Hard Truths about Porn and Erectile Dysfunction” (2017). Under a David Ley hit-piece on porn recovery forums, Prause and “bart” debate the merits of Taylor’s sociological gibberish masquerading as “deep thought.” Bart exposes Prause as misrepresenting Taylor’s paper.
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Trolling other’s twitter accounts:
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Never provides concrete examples of “twisting our science”…. never:
Others – October, 2016: Prause states falsely that SASH and IITAP “board members and practitioners are openly sexist and assaultive to scientists“
On October 12, 2016 a petition to Psychology Today (asking the organization to reconsider its editorial policy) was published on “petitionbuzz.com” The next day Nicole Prause & Jim Pfaus posted four comments under the petition. Prause & Pfaus co-authored this paper (it’s not an actual study), that they claim debunked porn-induced ED. Two peer-reviewed papers (paper 1, paper 2) and three lay critiques say otherwise (1, 2, 3). As do 35 studies linking porn use to sexual problems or lower arousal. Under the petition, Jim Pfaus calls SASH and IITAP “addiction cults” and “snake oil salesmen” (Pfaus is not a therapist). He also falsely claims that there’s “no empirically-based clinical or biological science supporting porn addiction or the negative effects of porn use.”
Update (2019):News reports paint Jim Pfaus as having spent years engaging in inappropriate sexual behaviors with young female students. Excerpts:
The sources paint a picture of a professor they believe repeatedly crossed appropriate boundaries with his students.
a group of graduate students approached several of Concordia’s psychology professors who were in charge of the department’s management. They filed a written complaint about Pfaus’s alleged sexual relationships with undergraduate students in classes he taught.
Pfaus was placed on administrative leave, then mysteriously departed the university. The irony of Pfaus lecturing licensed therspists on sexuality.
On to Nikky. In a reply comment, Prause echoed fellow troll Pfaus calling “IITAP/CSAT’s” snake oil salesmen. Now that’s an unbiased researcher.
Nicole Prause posted 3 more comments, including this one where she claims that all members of IITAP and SASH are “openly sexist” and “assaultive to scientists”:
What evidence does Prause provide to incriminate all the members in these two very large and diverse organizations, accusing them all of “sexism and assaults on scientists?” Prause posts links to her fabricated claims about Gary Wilson (described above). Since Wilson is not a member of either organization, it’s baffling how Prause’s ramblings about Wilson incriminate over a thousand therapists, PhDs, medical doctors and psychologists belonging to these two organizations. Once again, we have inflammatory and defamatory claims without a shred of evidence.
A few examples Prause harassing SASH on twitter:
Her silly little inforgraphic, which includes the entirety of her evidence:
Working as one, Prause tweets a David Ley blog post libeling IITAP. The blog post was removed by Psychology Today:
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Tags IITAP in a article that has nothing to with sex or porn addiction. Typical mischaracterization, combined with cyber-stalking:
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Prause creates a logo to harass IITAP members on twitter: “I FAP (masturbation) before IITAP”
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No Fraud, but Prause did file a spurious claim (as Prause so often does) with a journal, claiming the data wasn’t quite right. The Journal and publisher were forced to look into Prause assertions – and found nothing to her claims. No one ever does. Anyhow, Prause’s twitter falsehoods related to this manufactured incident:
David Ley joins in with his blog post that was removed from Psychology Today:
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More harassment over a 2 year old critique of Prause & Pfaus, 2015:
Another:
Prause & Pfaus 2015? It wasn’t a study on men with ED. It wasn’t a study at all. Instead, Prause claimed to have gathered data from four of her earlier studies, none of which addressed erectile dysfunction. It’s disturbing that this paper by Nicole Prause and Jim Pfaus passed peer-review as the data in their paper did not match the data in the underlying four studies on which the paper claimed to be based. The discrepancies are not minor gaps, but gaping holes that cannot be plugged. In addition, the paper made several claims that were false or not supported by their data. Prause & Pfaus 2015 as these 2 critiques expose, it cannot support a single claim it made, including Prause’s claim that they measured sexual response:
Prause post a screenshot of a Stefanie Carnes comment on on the Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder section (CSBD) of the ICD-11 (you can’t read the comments unless you create a username)
The above comment was made in a general response to dozens of Nicole Prause comments where Prause personally attacked therapists and organizations (IITAP, SASH, ASAM) for supposedly “profiting from sex and porn addiction.” Prause has spent the last 4 years obsessively posting on the ICD-11 beta draft, doing her best to prevent the CSBD diagnosis from making it into the final manual. In fact, Prause posted more comments than everyone else combined. (Her attempt failed, as “Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder.” is now in the ICD-11)
Who’s the cyber-stalker when Prause tweets over 1oo times about IITAP or Carnes, while IITAP & Carnes never tweet about Prause?
Updates – Three sex addiction therapists (IITAP members), and a professor who has co-authored papers with IITAP members, filed affidavits in Don Hilton’s defamation lawsuit against Nicole Prause:
Others – November, 2016: Prause asks VICE magazine to fire infectious disease specialist Keren Landman, MD for supporting Prop 60 (condoms in porn)
California Proposition 60 would have mandated condom use in porn films. It was supported by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), a nonprofit HIV/AIDS care and advocacy organization, and vehemently opposed by porn producers and interestingly enough, Nicole Prause and colleague David Ley. In the run up to the 2016 election, Prause and Ley seemed obsessed with defeating Prop 60, while relatively unconcerned about graver issues such as health care, immigration, or jobs. Both Prause and Ley spent considerable effort tweeting and re-tweeting attacks on Prop 60, and support for the Free Speech Coalition, the lobbying arm for the porn industry (tweet1, tweet2, tweet3, tweet4, tweet5, tweet6, tweet7, tweet8, tweet9, tweet10, tweet11 – NOTE: Prause deleted many of these tweets in April, 2016). One such example of Prause supporting the porn industry:
In a series of tweets, Prause joins an “adult actor” in attacking a Keren Landman, a medical doctor specializing in infectious disease.
In Prause’s esteemed opinion, VICE magazine should have fired expert Dr. Landman for writing an article supporting Prop 60:
Freelancer? While Prause’s degree is in statistics, Keren Landman MD is a researcher, medical epidemiologist, and infectious disease specialist who once worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HIV infection is one of her specialties, having published several papers in the field. Once again, we have Prause personally attacking experts in a field, while simultaneously failing to support her position with empirical evidence. (Does anyone believe Prause’s claim that “every independent scientist supports prop 60″?) Whatever anyone thinks about Prop 60, Dr. Landman’s position is supported by research, and Nicole Prause’s is not.
The question remains: Why are both Prause and Ley such outspoken supporters of the porn industry, and so eager to attack anyone and everyone who suggests porn use or sex without a condom may pose problems? Insight in these 2 links:
Others – November, 2016: Prause falsely claims to have sent cease & desist letters to the 4 panelists on the Mormon Matters podcast (Don Hilton, Stefanie Carnes, Alexandra Katehakis, Jackie Pack)
On November 10, 2016 “Mormon Matters” published the following podcast: 353–354: Championing the “Addiction” Paradigm with Regard to Pornography/Sex Addiction. It was a response to an earlier Mormon Matters podcast (episodes 347–348) where Prause and three therapists tried their very best to debunk porn addiction and sex addiction. In Podcast 353–354, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon was joined by four panelists: Jackie Pack (LCSW, CSAT–S, CMAT), Alexandra Katehakis (MFT, CSAT-S, CST-S), Stefanie Carnes (Ph.D., CSAT-S), and Donald Hilton (M.D.).
Within a few minutes of the podcast going live, Nicole Prause and, apparently, her sock puppets (“Skeptic”, “Lack of expertise on panel”, “Danny”) posted a dozen comments attacking the four panelists. Prause & sock puppets was joined in her ad hominem fest by Jay Blevins and Natasha Helfer-Parker (two of the therapists who collaborated with Prause on episodes 347-348). Over the next few days, Prause, Jay Blevins, and Natasha Helfer-Parker posted dozens more ad hominem comments. Nicole Prause posted her typical lies about Gary Wilson stealing photos, having to lock down her lab, and “fortifying her home” (maybe she installed a bomb-shelter to protect her from unfavorable blog posts). Also, in one of her numerous comments, Prause claimed that:
She had sent Cease & Desist letters to members of the panel
Two of the panelists are currently under APA investigation
Prause’s comment:
We contacted the panelists, and it was confirmed that:
No panelist has received a cease and desist letter from Dr. Prause, and
No panelist has been contacted by the APA (the American Psychological Association).
Once again, we have evidence that Nicole Prause is making false statements. And suppose Prause had actually sent cease and desist letters? It would be evidence of nothing, as anyone can pay a lawyer to send a spurious cease and desist letter (as Prause is wont to do).
Update: All of the many comments under podcast: 353–354, including several libelous ones by Prause, have mysteriously disappeared. Is this another instance of Prause trying to cleanup her public image?
Nicole Prause as “PornHelps” (on Twitter, website, comment sections). Accounts deleted once Prause was outed as “PornHelps”
Nicole Prause created a username called “PornHelps”, which had its own twitter account (@pornhelps) and a website promoting the porn industry and cherry-picked studies reporting the “positive” effects of porn. Prause’s “PornHelps” chronically badgered the same people and organizations that Prause often attacked. In fact, Prause would team up with her alias PornHelps to attack individuals on Twitter and elsewhere in tandem with her other identities. Some of the Prause/PornHelps coordinated attacks are documented in these Prause-page sections:
The @pornhelps twitter account and PornHelps website were suddenly deleted when it became apparent to that Prause was the individual behind both. While many of us being attacked knew “PornHelps” was really Nicole Prause, the following @pornhelps tweet left no doubt:
Prause, a Kinsey grad, calls herself a neuroscientist, and appears to have started college about 15 years earlier than the above 2016 tweet. In response to several ad hominem attacks by “PornHelps”, which perfectly mirrored many of Prause’s usual comments, “PornHelps” was confronted in the comments section of Psychology Today with this and other evidence: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/comment/887468#comment-887468
Want more confirmation that PornHelps was really Prause? The following comments, tweets, and coincidences make it apparent.
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Here Prause and Russell J. Stambaugh simultaneously comment under an article about porn. Prause & Stambaugh are close allies and often comment together in pre-planned assaults in comment sections.
At the same time that Prause tweeted the above, “PornHelps” began posting in the comments section below the paper. A few of PornHelps’ comments below. How does PornHelps know so much about research methodology and statistics? (Prause’s PhD was in stats):
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And here’s more confirmation that PornHelps is Prause. The PornHelps comments under an NPR interview of Prause are nearly identical to Prause’s usual spin about the claimed benefits of porn:
Now a taste of Prause (as PornHelps) attacking Wilson on various websites: promoting porn and misrepresenting the current state of the research. (Note: PornHelps was very busy attacking others on PT and other websites, and of course, via Twitter).
Pornhelps going after Wilson mirrors Prause’s language in many comments (“stalker,” “massage therapist,” “fake,” etc.)
Look familiar? Prause is the only commentor who calls Wilson a cyberstalker and a massage therapist (other than her sidekick David Ley):
The following are some of the over 20 comments under the Prause op-ed by PornHelps. Prause’s #2 obsession after Gary Wilson is FTND, which Prause has tweeted about over 100 times. The comments perfectly mirror Prause tweets misrepresenting the research and attacking FTND.
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PornHelps mentions the same Australian study that Prause tweets all the time:
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Here PornHelps mirrors dozens of Prause tweets or comments – both naming the exact same findings from outlier studies.
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Another example of Prause/PornHelps attacking Wilson (while teaming up with David Ley). Many more examples can be found on this page.
Again, Prause deleted “PornHelps” twitter and website, but later resurrected the porn-industry shill account as RealYourBrainOnPorn
Prause’s tweet linked to a radio show about Jehovah Witnesses and sex abuse, which contained a segment about a 14-year old gay teen whose mom found his stash of porn magazines. Since being gay is against JW doctrine, the church insisted the gay teen no longer masturbate to images of men. The gay teen was driven to thoughts of suicide because he was a homosexual stuck in the JW facing the very real prospect of being tossed out of the church and shunned by his family and friends. The radio segment did not mention NoFap. Here’s Prause’s tweet (notice that only David Ley liked it):
Prause’s twisted and libelous tweet attempting to smear NoFap in connection with an entirely unrelated event demonstrates just how far she is willing to stretch the truth in pursuit of her agenda. The NoFapTeam responded with 3 tweets:
Not so coincidentally, a rambling hit piece about NoFap, featuring Nicole Prause, was published a few days later by Medical Daily. Of course Prause tweeted it, saying “claims busted by scientists.” By “scientists” Prause means herself. This goes to show that Prause has many contacts in the media, and uses them to her advantage. Prause also called NoFap “woo woo and cult-like.” Medical Daily author Lizette Borreli went so far as to label NoFap an “anti-sex group.” Anyone who has visited Nofap knows that nothing could be further from the truth. Many experiment with NoFap to regain their sexual function. NoFap decided to set the record straight with a few tweets of its own (1, 2, 3, 4), including this one:
Once again, Prause teams up with David Ley to defame Alexander Rhodes, Nofap (along with Gary Wilson’s website and RebootNation). Revealing her long-time obsession with over Rhodes, Prause tweets 4 screenshots from the last 3 years:
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It sure seems that Prause tweets more about NoFap and Alexander Rhodes than she does about her own research. Prause claims to be licensed psychologist. What ethical psychologist would go out of the way to call a young man recovering from compulsive porn use a liar, especially without evidence? Ethics violation? Violation of APA principles?
December, 2016: In a Quora answer Prause tells a porn addict to visit a prostitute (a violation of APA ethics and California law)
Below is a screenshot of Prause’s original answer posted in response to this Quora question: How can I overcome masturbation and/or porn addiction? What are the best methods? While Prause’s post was written in September, 2016, its existence was further publicized in this December 14th IITAP blog post that responded to AASECT’s proclamation that porn and sex addiction are myths. (Thereafter the original Prause response was deleted.) Here is the paragraph from IITAP’s response that linked to the Prause Quora post. (Keep in mind that Prause was an instrumental figure in misleading a small band of AASECT therapists that porn and sex addiction had been debunked – not the case).
On the other side, many clinicians are expressing worry that people who truly are sexual addicts are harmed by well-meaning sex therapists who without insight or full understanding of these issues discount the problematic nature of these symptoms, thus writing off a client’s compulsive sexual behavior patterns as normal and non-consequential, even suggesting that clients’ issues are related more to their attitude about sex than the sex itself. This stance is clearly harmful to those clients who are getting and sharing STD’s with unwitting partners and/or losing marriages, jobs and educational opportunities due to self-described excessive porn use, online hook-ups and the like. Consider, for instance, the recently published blog from a well-known researcher, and AASECT faculty member that recommended that someone with a porn addiction should go see a sex worker instead of masturbating to porn (since the posting of this article this blog has been removed). From the IITAP educational perspective, such blatant disregard of compulsive behavior can without question be harmful to the client and those close to him or her.
Below is a screenshot of Prause’s original answer posted in response to this Quora question (Prause has since deleted her answer). Prause’s suggestion to visit a prostitute is in the last paragraph:
While this is not defamation or harassment, it’s relevant because it shows a complete disregard for professional ethics, ethical and social norms, and the rule of law. This theme permeates everything revealed about Nicole Prause on this page. Prause perjured herself in court filings, falsely claiming she never posted the above answer.
Others – December, 2016: Prause reports Fight the New Drug (FTND) to the State of Utah
Nicole Prause seems to tweet more about Fight The New Drug (FTND) than she does about her or others’ research. A quick look reveals that Prause tweeted 35 times about FTND in November & December 2016.
On December 19, 2016, Prause wrote an e-mail to the Utah State Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS), in which she accused Fight the New Drug in its online Fortify program (an online educational curriculum for teens and adults seeking to overcome compulsive pornography use) of both “soliciting sexual stories from children” without parental consent and “coercing” children to provide these stories. While underscoring that she was a “licensed psychologist in California (CA #27778)” and a “mandated reporter” the single reference she provided to support her initial claim was a hit-piece from an online website called “Harlot Magazine.”
Nicole CC’d the CEO of Fight the New Drug (FTND), Clay Olsen, on her complaint to DCFS. Subsequent phone calls from FTND to DCFS revealed that (while they could officially neither confirm nor deny whether an investigation was taking place) (1) the accusation from Prause meets none of the criteria for something DCFS investigates, and (2) it was not necessary for FTND to meet with DCFS since there was “nothing to investigate” and “nothing to explain.”
Despite all this, Prause continued publicly tweeting her concerns about “@FightTheNewDrug child victims” and posted the following request to all her twitter followers, “if your child completed @FightTheNewDrug Fortify program, asking sexual hx, Utah DCFS wants to talk to you. This how to get heard.”
Several more related tweets, containing factually incorrect & inflammatory drivel, which the state of Utah determined to be empty rhetoric:
Prause went so far as to produce short YouTube videos to harass FTND and researchers:
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Prause escalates the rhetoric, accusing FTND of coercion and ultimately of pedophilia!
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In the following tweets Prause inudates @delmonater with her unsupported propagand (which the state of Utah rightfully ignored)
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Below is Prause’s ever-present info-graphic, calling everyone she harrases a misogynist, while providing zero evidence to support her falsehoods. 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 this 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. She has even been known to tweet combinations of misogyny claims and claims that (legitimate, peer-reviewed) science with which she disagrees is “fake.” Any suggestion that FTND, Don Hilton, Wilson, Gabe Deem or Alexander Rhodes are motivated by misogyny is fabricated, as their 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.
This next tweet contains Prause’s second “info-graphic” she regularly tweets. It lists FTND, SASH, IITAP, YBOP, NoFap.com, RebootNation, PornAddiction.com, and others as “fake news” websites” while listing only two websites as having accaurate information about pornography’s effects: 1) Justin Lemillers website (a paid writer for Playboy); 2) AASECT, which is not a sceintific organization (debunking of AASECT’s proclamation that porn/sex addiction doesn’t exist).
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RealYBOP/Prause attacking FTND with Prause’s long since debunked 600-word op-ed:
Prause’s Op-Ed is chock full of unsupported assertions meant to fool the lay public. It fails to support a single assertion as it cites only 4 papers – none of which have anything to do with porn addiction, porn’s effects on relationships, or porn-induced sexual problems. Several experts in this field and I debunked its assertions and empty rhetoric in this relatively short response – Op-ed: Who exactly is misrepresenting the science on pornography? (2016). Unlike the “neuroscientists of the Op-Ed,” we cited several hundred studies and multiple reviews of the literature.
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The preceding tweets are but a small sample of Prause’s tweets and Facebook comments defaming and disparaging FTND. Prause’s claims she is victim, yet she is the perpetrator.
Thus Prause continues her pattern of misusing regulatory bodies for unwarranted complaints – partly as a way to intimidate individuals and organizations and partly as a way for her to subsequently use her own specious and defamatory accusations in broader media opportunities.
Others – January, 2017: Nicole Prause tweets that Noah B. Church is a scientifically inaccurate non-expert and religious profiteer
Once again, Prause launches an unprovoked, defamatory twitter attack on a man who recovered from porn-induced ED. The following Prause tweet seems to be related to Noah’s appearance on the DearSugarRadio segment “My Fiancé Is Addicted To Porn“.
Was Noah scientifically inaccurate? Nope. As is usual, Prause fails to describe the supposed inaccuracies.
provided one-on-one coaching and advice to those recovering from porn addiction and porn-induced ED
Is Noah religious? Nope. He is an atheist, which he has stated many times in past.
Is Noah a profiteer? His book, videos and website are all given freely. Noah only charges for one-on-one coaching because it’s so time-consuming.
We assume that Dr. Prause doesn’t treat clients for free (if she sees clients). We know that Prause offered (for a fee) her “expert” testimony against sex addiction and porn addiction. She also receives payment for speaking engagements where she debunks porn and sex addiction.
Finally, consider the fact that it is a violation of APA (American Psychological Association) principles for psychologists to attack those trying to recover.
Others – January, 2017: Prause smears professor Frederick M. Toates with a bogus claim
Prior to the publication “The Routledge International Handbook of Sexual Addiction” Prause tweets that the book’s “only neuroscience chapter was written by a person with no neuroscience training”:
The chapter in question is 3.2 – “The Neuroscience of Sexual Addiction” and was written by Frederick M. Toates DPhil DSc.
The 73-year old Toates is Emeritus Professor of Biological Psychology at The Open University and Vice-President of the Open University Psychology Society. He is not only trained in neuroscience, he is a professor of biological psychology (neuroscience).
With two doctoral degrees, Frederick Toates is a pioneer in the study of motivational systems (the reward system), especially in relationship to sexual desire and motivation. His latest book: How Sexual Desire Works: The Enigmatic Urge. Professor Toates was publishing biological research and authoring neuroscience books before Nikky Prause was a gleam in her parents’ eyes. While Professor Toates is still actively publishing and working in academia, non-academic Prause hasn’t been associated with a university for over 2 years.
With Prause’s targets expanding, it appears that there is no lie too outrageous to tell nor target too unassailable to smear. Welcome to the club, Professor Toates.
Two years later when Fred Toates points out David Ley’s hypocrisy and Ley loses it, calling Gary Wilson names and babbles about neurobabble:
David Ley lecturing Toates (or anyone else) on neuroscience or dopamine? Hilarious.
Ongoing: Prause uses social media to harass & defame publisher MDPI, researchers who publish in MDPI, and anyone citing Park et al., 2016
MDPI is the Swiss parent company of numerous academic journals, including Behavioral Sciences. Prause is obsessed with MDPI because (1) Behavioral Sciences published two articles that Prause disagrees with (because they discussed papers by her, among hundreds of papers by other authors), and, (2) Gary Wilson is a co-author of Park et al., 2016. The two paper:
The second paper (Park et al.) didn’t analyze Prause’s research. It cited findings in 3 of her papers. At the request of a reviewer during the peer-review process, it addressed the third, a 2015 paper by Prause & Pfaus, by citing a scholarly piece in a journal that heavily criticized the paper. (There was not enough space in Park et al. to address all the flaws and unsupported claims found in Prause & Pfaus.)
A few days after Park et al.‘s publication Prause insisted that MDPI retract it. The professional response to scholarly articles one disapproves of is to publish a comment outlining any objections. Behavioral Sciences’s parent company, MDPI, invited Prause to do this. Prause declined the offer and demanded (unwarranted) retraction instead. Since Park et al.’s publication Prause has been trying every weapon in her arsenal to have the paper retracted (including sending bogus complaints to the medical boards of all 7 physicians who co-authored the paper). Her emails to MDPI officials, filled with spurious claims and easily debunked allegations, have failed to achieve her goal. No one on the receiving end of her invective had ever witnessed such bizarre behavior by a researcher.
Most unprofessionally, she has turned to threats and social media (and most recently the Retraction Watch blog) to bully MDPI into retracting Park et al. In addition, she informed MDPI that she had filed complaints with the American Psychological Association and the doctors’ medical boards. She also pressured the doctors’ medical center and Institutional Review Board, causing a lengthy, thorough investigation, which found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the paper’s authors.
Having failed to bring about an unmerited retraction, Dr. Prause has continued to make untrue statements about the journal itself, claiming that Behavioral Sciences is a predatory journal (it isn’t – it’s PubMed indexed), and that Park et al. was never reviewed (normally a journal sends a paper to 2 reviewers for comments and criticisms). In reality, the paper was reviewed at least 6 times that we know of (for Behvavioral Sciences alone), including one very antagonistic review from Dr. Prause – who later indirectly identified herself as the person who reviewed not only the Behavioral Sciences submission, but an earlier, much shorter version of the paper, submitted to Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine (YJBM).
In many of her emails to MDPI (and others), Prause mentioned her “77 criticisms” and falsely claimed that they had not been addressed. In reality, many of the 77 so-called problems were carelessly copied and pasted from Prause’s review of the YJBM submission; 25 of them had nothing to do with the Behavioral Sciences submission. In other words, the only reviewer to condemn the paper had cut and pasted dozens of criticisms from a review done at another journal (YJBM), which no longer had any relevance to the paper submitted to Behavioral Sciences. This is highly unprofessional.
Even apart from that glaring irregularity, few of the 77 problems could be considered legitimate. Yet, we carefully combed through each comment mining for useful insights, and wrote a comprehensive response to all comments for Behavioral Sciences and its editors. Almost all of the remaining 50 critical comments were either scientifically inaccurate, groundless, or were simply false statements. Some were repetitive. The authors provided MDPI with a point by point response to each so-called problem.
Prause is claiming that publisher MDPI is on predatory journal list cataloged by librarian Jeffrey Beall. This assertion is false, and there’s no list associated with the link Prause tweeted. MDPI does not publish predatory journals. In fact, it was investigated years ago after it was mistakenly placed on a predatory list, and formally determined to be a legitimate publisher. See: http://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/534. The man (Jeffrey Beall) who made the error eventually deleted his entire operation
MDPI responds:
Prause Twitter rampage has continued (a few of her tweets below):
MDPI responds to Prause:
CEO of MDPI Franck Vazquez, Ph.D, also responds, as does Prause:
Prause keeps going (MDPI eventually ignores her Twitter tagging):
Has Prause been trying to have MDPI thrown out of PubMed and other indices based on her untruths? Three tweets from August, 2016 – just a few weeks after Park et al., 2016 was published:
From a hit piece containing several false statements by Prause: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/mormontherapist/2016/12/op-ed.html. One article referred to is Park et al., the review co-authored by 7 Navy doctors and me. The other is co-authored by other experts, including Todd Love PsyD – whom Prause has also harassed. (Again, MDPI was formally exonerated and removed even before Beall took his list down.)
Prause has also tried to interfere with other MDPI journal issues by defaming MDPI:
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Here are examples of Prause unprofessionally shaming others for collaborating/publishing with/receiving awards from MDPI:
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Here Prause plays her favorite card – accusing others of misogyny – without a shred of evidence (just as she has done with me and multiple others).
More false accusations of misogyny:
Prause falsely claims the Behavioral Sciences paper she attacked was retracted. This is both defamatory and unprofessional.
The Twitter conversation continues:
After a lengthy, thorough, time-consuming investigation, MDPI decided not to retract the paper, and circulated a draft editorial criticizing Prause’s unprofessional behavior. As soon as Prause was informed, she initiated an unprofessional, untruthful email exchange with MDPI – copying bloggers David Ley (her close colleague) and Retraction Watch among others. On the same day of this email barrage harrasing and threatening MDPI, Prause employed multiple Wikipedia usernames (which violates Wikipedia rules) to edit Wikipedia, inserting false information about MDPI and attacking the authors of Park et al., the MDPI president, and two others in the organization.
While Prause’ email threats are not on social media (yet), she has copied bloggers who are positioned to damage the reputations of MDPI in the media, if they choose. Ley blogs on Psychology Today and has often served as the Mouth of Prause. Neuro Skeptic has a popular blog that disparages legitimate (and sometimes dubious) research. Adam Marcus writes for Retraction Watch. Prause also copied Iratxe Puebla, who works for COPE, an organization that addresses publication ethics.
Update: On June 13, Retraction Watch (RW) published an inaccurate and biased account of events surrounding Behavioral Sciences paper Park et al., 2016. Prause contacted RW personnel and fed them the particulars she wanted in print – and RW swallowed them whole and duly published them. My response appears underneath the Retraction Watch article. However, RW edited my comment substantially before it would post it. I supply various missing details in this section: “Who’s watching Retraction Watch?” – an update on events. Among other distortions, the RW piece omitted material details about Nicole Prause’s unsuccessful (and unseemly) 4-year campaign to have the paper retracted (documented in 8 sections on this page: Prause’s efforts to have Behavioral Sciences review paper (Park et al., 2016) retracted). RetractionWatch refused to interview Gary Wilson, deliberately ignored dozens of saved emails proving Prause was lying, and carefully chose out-of-context excerpts from emails to paint a false picture of events. On to additional examples of Prause’s obsessive social media campaign attacking Park et al., 2016:
“Pornaddiction recovery” tweets two YBOP lists, which causes Prause to tweet a paper by Gary Wilson and Navy doctors. Prause falsely claims that she badgered COPE into suggesting a retraction. It’s all bullshit.
On February 16, 2019, a sexual medicine specialist presented a talk at the 21st Congress of the European Society for Sexual Medicine on the Internet’s impact on sexuality. A few slides describing porn-induced sexual problems, citing Park et al., 2016, were tweeted. The tweets caused Nicole Prause, David Ley, Joshua Grubbs and their allies to Twitter-rage on Park et al., 2016.
Update: Joshua Grubbs confirmed hsi extreme agenda-driven bias when they joined their allies Nicole Prause and David Ley in trying to silence YourBrainOnPorn.com. Grubbs, and other pro-porn “experts” at www.realyourbrainonporn.com are engaged in illegal trademark infringement and squatting.
On social media, Prause has stated that she got my talk cancelled because I presented “fake credentials.” For example, Prause’s tweet attacking the ESSM talk, and her claiming that Gary Wilson was uninvited because he “gave false credentials”:
More tweets attacking the 2019 ESSM talk and Park et al., 2016:
No, COPE did not suggest retraction, even though Prause harassed them for 3 straight years. As soon as COPE understood that all Navy consent rules had been complied with, all talk of retraction ended.
Another falsehood about “addiction being ruled out.” Diagnostic manuals such as the DSM and ICD do not use the word “addiction” to describe any addiction: they use “disorder.” In reality, the latest version of the World Health Organization’s medical diagnostic manual, The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), contains a new diagnosis suitable for diagnosing what is commonly referred to as ‘porn addiction’ or ‘sex addiction.’ It’s called “Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder” (CSBD).
Out of the blue, Prause tweets an attack on MDPI: The following downgraded rating by Norwegian Register was a clerical error, that was later corrected. See the explanation of the MDPI Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:MDPI#Reply_1-APR-2019
A link to the corrected version showing that MDPI was not downgraded in 2019 (it was clerical error that was eventually corrected). While the 2020 rating may also be an error, the Norwegian register does show “0’ – but it’s “not again”. Notice that Prause is attempting to fool the public by tweeting 2 screenshots of the ratings; one with only 2020, and a screenshot of the 2019 error that was later corrected. Prause’s screenshots:
First showing only 2020
Second showing the uncorrected error:
Prause is lying about MDPI’s 2019 rating (and later lies about 2020 ratings) as seen in a screenshot of the 2020 ratings:
It appears that the 2020 rating will be adjusted at the beginning of the year (it was).
In response, Prause trolls a 3-month old Frank Vasquez tweet:
Prause caught in another lie about the Norwegian ratings. The correct link to ratings page for each journal: https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/VedtakNiva1. Search for MDPI and you will see that all its journals have a “1” rating, including Behavioral Sciences, where Park et al., 2016 was published.
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August, 2019: Prause and David Ley team up to lie about Park et al., 2016. The paper is posted in a thread were Ley misrepresents the state research, claiming porn addiction doesn’t exist. Immediately Ley responds with defamation – claiming the authors paid to have Park et al., 2016 published:
Prause and Ley comment under an August, 2016 Psychology Today blog post by Mark Castleman. Castleman’s post is laden with falsehoods about Park et al., 2016 and Grubbs and Gola, 2016. Castleman lies about yourbrainonporn.com, claiming we misrepresent studies or list junk studiesl Like every other nayasayer but he fails to provide a single example of misrepresention. He also lies in his intro about what YBOP said about porn-induced ED. Everything he claimed about Park et al. is a lie: the content, its claims, its focus, the cases studies, the citations, you name it. This should not be a surprise as Castleman’s published many articles in support of the porn industry (all biased and scientifically inaccurate). He is not a researcher or therapist, only a journalist with an agenda. Castleman’s articles also promoted realyourbrainonporn.com as the source of truth concerning porn’s effects. There is little doubt of Prause and Ley’s involvement in his current hit-piece.
First the comment by Ley:
A few comments on Ley’s lies and spin.
LEY – Published in a very poor journal under strange circumstances.
Behavioral Sciences is PubMed indexed, unlike the journals that have accepted Ley’s 2 opinion pieces (e.g. Porn Studies Journal, Current Sexual Health Reports).
LEY – None of the authors appear to have any training in sexual health, or sex therapy and several are apparently ophthalmologist?
Typical Ley. Among the eight authors were seven physicians with the following expertise: two urologists, a neuroscientist, and two psychiatrists, and a general medical physician.” One author, Dr. Klam, is Director of Mental Health at the Naval Medical Center – San Diego. As for the ophthalmologist, Dr. Doan is both an MD and a PhD (Neuroscience – Johns Hopkins), is the former of Head of “Addictions and Resilience Research” in the Department of Mental Health at the Naval Medical Center. In addition to the papers on internet pornography, Doan has authored multiple papers on behavioral addiction/pathologies relating to technologies, (he published peer-reviewed studies before he evengraduating from high school).
LEY – The described medical assessments and treatments in the Park article are very troubling. In the first case study, the authors describe that they informed the patient that “use of a sex toy had potentially desensitized his penile nerves,” an extraordinary and unsupported statement to publish, without a urological examination.
Ley thinks it was egregious for the doctors to suggest giving up the sex toy and porn (even though the sailor was severely distress about his toy/porn induced sexual problems). An excerpt from the case-report exposing Ley’s advice as malpractice:
A 20-year old active duty enlisted Caucasian serviceman presented with difficulties achieving orgasm during intercourse for the previous six months. It first happened while he was deployed overseas. He was masturbating for about an hour without an orgasm, and his penis went flaccid. His difficulties maintaining erection and achieving orgasm continued throughout his deployment. Since his return, he had not been able to ejaculate during intercourse with his fiancée. He could achieve an erection but could not orgasm, and after 10–15 min he would lose his erection, which was not the case prior to his having ED issues. This was causing problems in his relationship with his fiancée.
Patient endorsed masturbating frequently for “years”, and once or twice almost daily for the past couple of years. He endorsed viewing Internet pornography for stimulation. Since he gained access to high-speed Internet, he relied solely on Internet pornography. Initially, “soft porn”, where the content does not necessarily involve actual intercourse, “did the trick”. However, gradually he needed more graphic or fetish material to orgasm. He reported opening multiple videos simultaneously and watching the most stimulating parts. When preparing for deployment about a year ago, he was worried about being away from partnered sex. So, he purchased a sex toy, which he described as a “fake vagina”. This device was initially so stimulating that he reached orgasm within minutes.
Medically, he had no history of major illness, surgery, or mental health diagnoses. He was not taking any medications or supplements. He denied using tobacco products but drank a few drinks at parties once or twice a month. He had never blacked out from alcohol intoxication. He reported multiple sexual partners in the past, but since his engagement a year ago his fiancée had been his sole sexual partner. He denied a history of sexually transmitted diseases. On physical examination, his vital signs were all normal, and his genital exam was normal appearing without lesions or masses.
At the conclusion of the visit, it was explained to him that use of a sex toy had potentially desensitized his penile nerves and watching hardcore Internet pornography had altered his threshold for sexual stimulation. He was advised to stop using the toy and watching hardcore Internet pornography. He was referred to urology for further evaluation.
By the time he was seen by the urologist a few weeks later, he had cut down on Internet pornography use significantly, although he said he could not completely stop. He ceased using the toy. He was having orgasms again through intercourse with his fiancée, and their relationship had improved.
More evidence that Ley should handing out sexual advice.
A comment by a Prause alias (she dares not comment as herself as she is involved in 2 lawsuits as of August, 2016):
An idiotic comment as Park et al., 2016 was not a study, but a review. As exposed on the current page, Prause is lying about ethics problems and the case reports. But what do you expect from MDPI’s cyberstalker?
Another comment by a Prause alias:
As above, Park was a review, so it did not present experimental data. However, it contained massive data throughout and 200 references.
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January, 2017 (and earlier): Prause employs multiple sock puppets (including “NotGaryWilson“) to edit Wikipedia pages
· 19:06, 19 January 2015 (diff | hist) . . (-9,453) . . Pornography addiction (This section talked only about delta fos-B, which has never been investigated with respect to erotica. Gary Wilson, a known porn blogger who makes money from porn “addiction” added this section, as he is the only one promoting it. It should be removed.) (Tag: section blanking)
Naming “Gary Wilson” is a dead give-away that the above user account is Nicole Prause. Reality Check: Gary Wilson makes no money related to this endeavor, and he did not add the DeltaFosB section to the “Pornography Addiction” Wiki page. As time passed, Prause fell back into her usual pattern of creating usernames with 3-4 capitalized words. For example:
While the above edits suggest that all are Prause as they consistently attack IITAP, Carnes, the addiction model, and falsely claim there’s no science supporting either porn or sex addiction. If there was any doubt, two of them once again comment about Gary Wilson and DeltaFosB. First, a telling “PatriotsAllTheWay” comment:
04:55, 21 January 2015 (diff | hist) . . (-9,433) . . Pornography addiction (Delata fos B has never been linked to sexual behaviors in humans, not once. This section was added by Gary Wilson, promoting his book for profit of the same idea.) (Tag: section blanking)
A few comments: 1) All of Gary Wilson’s profits from the sales of his book go to charity, and his website is otherwise entirely non-commercial; 2) Contrary to Prause’s claim, DeltaFosB is present in humans and all neuroscientists studying its mechanisms agree that DeltaFosb is involved with multiple physiological functions, including sensitization to sexual activity and addiction.
A Wikipedia “user-page” is automatically created for every username that edits a Wikipedia article. “NotGaryWilson” is the only Prause sock puppet to have made a comment on its user page. Here’s what “NotGaryWilson” wrote about the “Sex Addiction” article:
As you are probably aware, anti-porn groups repeatedly sabatoge these pages for profit. Delta FOSb has no direct support, but is a pet idea from Gary Wilson, paid anti-porn activist. So, yes, I did mean to remove the text and will go ahead and remove it again. I will add the justification back. There is no evidence supporting the connections Wilson makes, which is why it is so easy to spot his writing.
As with the “Pornography Addiction” Wikipedia page, Gary Wilson in fact added none of the DeltaFosB material to the “Sexual Addiction” Wikipedia page. As stated, Wilson is paid by no one, and makes no money on this endeavor. Finally, only non-academics David Ley and Nicole Prause ever assert that DeltaFosB is not involved with initiating addiction-related brain changes. (Prause is particularly obsessed discrediting with DeltaFosB.) Contrary to their unsupported rantings, DeltaFosB’s role in addiction and sensitization is well established in both animal and human studies (see list 1 and list 2 for DeltaFosB studies). A veteran Wikipedia editor responds to the above comments by “NotGaryWilson”:
I’m C.Fred. I noticed that you recently removed some content from Sexual addiction without adequately explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an accurate edit summary. If this was a mistake, don’t worry; the removed content has been restored.
And,
It’s pretty clear from your username that you have an axe to grind with the topic. Chopping broad sections from the article is not a constructive way to go about this. You need to discuss your changes on the talk page and get broad support for them. —C.Fred (talk) 00:48, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Don’t hold your breath for broad (legitimate) support for unsupported claims about Wilson or DeltaFosB. Sometimes Prause uses an IP address as a username. This Wikipedia user only edited “Sex Addiction” blabbering on about “FosB” and CSATs & IITAP – two of Prause’s favorite targets:
It appears that Nicole Prause employed two additional usernames to edit the Fight The New Drug Wikipedia page (FTND is one of Prause’s favorites targets):
What makes us suspect that both usernames are Nicole Prause? Not only did both usernames edit only the FTND Wikipedia page, both created the section featuring Prause’s often-tweeted op-ed that appeared in the Salt Lake City Tribune. Prause wrote the critique of Fight the New Drug’s previous op-ed, then persuaded 7 of her PhD buddies to sign off on it. Prause’s op-ed cited only a few irrelevant citations, while offering no neuroscience-based studies. It also made several false statements about the content and references in the earlier FTND op-ed. Several experts responded with this dismantling of the Prause op-ed: Op-ed: Who exactly is misrepresenting the science on pornography? (2016).
In a rare turn of events, the Nicole Prause Wikipedia page was created by a Wikipedia employee. Whatever this employee’s motivation, there is little doubt that two primary usernames editing thsi page are Prause herself:
Prause, who has not been affiliated with any academic institution since early 2015, attacks Professor Dines in a Tweet:
This public insult was part of a thread where Prause scathingly assailed a university student in Sweden for endeavoring to study abuse of porn performers (later deleted by Prause).
Another tweet calling both Gail Dines and Fight The New Drug (FTND) liars and “anti-LGBT” and “anti-woman”:
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The @BrainOnPorn twitter is believed to be Prause. who uses it to disparage the same people Prause does, while promoting the porn industry’s agenda. Here, RealYBOP trolls an account that quotes Gail Dines (April 22, 2019).
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More trolling by porn-industry shill RealYBOP (May, 2019)
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Out of nowhere, RealYBOP trolls Dines:
RealYBOP claims to have wrote the research, but Prause has never published a study on porn use and sexism.
Others – May, 2017: Prause attacks SASH (Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health)
Background: Prause has asserted that she has “debunked” and “falsified” the work of dozens of expert addiction neuroscientists with a single flawed study. That study has been formally critiqued repeatedly in the academic literature, as explained below.
Perhaps upset that SASH’s new Position Paper dared to look to the preponderance of neuroscientific evidence on the subject of sexual behavior addiction instead of looking to Prause’s assertions, Prause tweeted the following unjustifed, retaliatory claims. SASH has never commented on Prause.
Others – May, 2017: In response to paper presented at a urology conference Prause calls US Navy urologists “activists, not scientists.”
Prause’s typical tactics are two-fold: 1) disparage every study that links porn use to negative outcomes, 2) personally attack those involved with the study. These behaviors serve her goal, which is to “prove” that porn use is rarely harmful, and almost always beneficial. In this tweet she disparages a study by US navy urologists, saying they are “activists, not scientists.”
Prause follows this attack with her own “official” press release attacking the study, which Prause has never seen. A second Prause tweet asserts that the medical doctors “ducked from reporters due to shame.” This is found nowhere in the article Prause tweeted and Prause did not attend the urology conference where the paper was presented:
It must be noted that Prause’s own “ED paper,” Prause & Pfaus 2015, wasn’t a study at all. Instead, Prause claimed to have gathered data from four of her earlier studies, none of which addressed erectile dysfunction. Additional problem: The data in the Prause & Pfaus (2015) paper do not match the data in the four earlier studies. The discrepancies are not small and have not been explained.
Many journalists’ articles about this study claimed that porn use led to better erections, yet that’s not what the paper found. In recorded interviews, both Prause and Pfaus falsely claimed that they had measured erections in the lab, and that the men who used porn had better erections. In this Jim Pfaus TV interview Pfaus states:
“We looked at the correlation of their ability to get an erection in the lab.”
“We found a liner correlation with the amount of porn they viewed at home, and the latencies which for example they get an erection is faster.”
In this radio interview Prause claimed that erections were measured in the lab. The exact quote from the show:
“The more people watch erotica at home they have stronger erectile responses in the lab, not reduced.”
Yet this paper did not assess erection quality in the lab or “speed of erections.” The paper only claimed to have asked guys to rate their “arousal” after briefly viewing porn (and it’s not clear from the underlying papers that even that actually happened in the case of all subjects). In any case, an excerpt from the paper itself admitted that:
“No physiological genital response data were included to support men’s self-reported experience.”
Nowhere in Prause & Pfaus 2015, or the 4 underlying papers, were lab measures of erectile functioning mentioned or reported. Truth? What’s that?
Others – September 14, 2017: Prause claims all who believe porn can be harmful and addictive are “science-illiterate & misogynistic”
Others – January 24, 2018: Prause files groundless complaints against therapist Staci Sprout
Continuing her behind-the-scenes pattern of filing baseless, harassing complaints against anyone whose views Prause disagrees with, Prause filed two unfounded complaints against therapist Staci Sprout, accusing Sprout of “conspiracy theories.” This was after falsely accusing her on a Facebook post comment of practicing without a license. Note that Prause tried to persuade the State of Washington to hide Prause’s bogus complaint from Sprout. Because the complaint was baseless, Prause was not considered a whistleblower, and identity was not protected – despite a second complaint by Prause insisting she had whistleblower status.
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According to the records, Washington received Prause’s complaint on January 24th, and the case was opened on January 30th. Two days later (February 1st) the State of Washington dismissed the empty complaint (without an investigation) and closed the case, declaring that even if the allegations were true, no violation of law would have occurred.
To understand Prause’s dishonesty and irrational action look at her “complaint” to the State of Washington. Prause targeted the following Sprout post, which is found on the Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder section (CSBD) of the ICD-11 (you can’t read the comments unless you create a username):
Again let us not neglect to consider the financial interests of those who benefit by the billions from unidentified, untreated compulsive sexual behavior. Two easy examples: “free” pornography sites who are paid for advertising, and drug manufacturers of ED drugs. They might even have lobbyists.
Context: The above comment was made in a general response to dozens of Nicole Prause comments where Prause personally attacked therapists and organizations (IITAP, SASH, ASAM) for supposedly “profiting from sex and porn addiction.” Prause has spent the last 2 years obsessively posting on the ICD-11 beta draft, doing her best to prevent the CSBD diagnosis from making it into the final manual. (Her attempt failed, and CSBD is now in the ICD-11 – see below.) In fact, Prause posted more comments than everyone else combined.
When Sprout dared to point out the more likely profiteers, Prause reported her to Washington State! Here’s Prause complaint to the Board:
Violation: Stated that we had “lobbyists” and that “pornography sites who are paid for advertising, and drug manufactures of ED drugs”. None of this is true. Neither I nor any of my colleagues who publish peer-reviewed science have any “lobbyist” efforts. These conspiracy theories appear promoted to support her own books and profit her therapy practice.
Notice how Prause lied, saying that Sprout’s comment was about Prause and unnamed colleagues – and not, as Sprout actually wrote, about the billions made by “free pornography sites” (most owned by wealthy Mindgeek) and “drug manufacturers of ED drugs”. In short, this is not a legitimate complaint; it’s simply harassment.
Prause’s second complaint to Washington
Unsatisfied with Washington’s dismissive response, and angry that her duplicity in filing a groundless complaint against Sprout was made public on this page, Prause filed a second complaint against Sprout. Prause falsely claimed she had “whistleblower status.” The State again disagreed, and Washington again released the related correspondence to Sprout:
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Update (5-14-18): Prause harasses and defames Staci Sprout on her Facebook page – falsely claiming Sprout was not licensed:
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Update (6-8-18): The “implementation version” of the ICD-11 (the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases – the world’s most widely used medical diagnostic manual) is now out (as of June, 2018). Its mental-health-expert authors have included a diagnosis that can be used to diagnose anyone suffering from compulsive sexual behavior (including sexual behavior addictions) called “Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder.”
Prior to the release of the “implementation version, ” a beta draft of the ICD-11 was also put online, and made available for interested parties to comment on. (A simple sign-up is needed to view and participate.) Note: Prause has posted more comments in the beta-draft comment section than everyone else combined. In the comments section under this new proposal, Prause attacks Staci Sprout, falsely claiming that Sprout “is under continued investigation” by the State of Washington. In fact, as explained and documented above, Washington summarily dismissed both of Prause’s baseless complaints.
May, 2019: David Ley and RealYBOP (Prause alias account) misrepresenting Staci Sprout’s tweet. Sprout said nothing about “sex addiction”:
RealYBOP (Prause) tweets a link to an excerpt from Prause’s Geoffrey Reed email (on RealYBOP). Geoffrey Reed isn’t an official WHO spokesperson, and this was only a private email to Prause to get her off of his back. In truth only one official WHO spokesperson has commented on CSBD – Christian Lindmeier. If you have any doubts about the true nature of the Prause/RealYBOP campaign, carefully read this responsible article about compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD). It quotes official WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier. Lindmeier is one of only four officials WHO spokespersons listed on this page: Communications contacts in WHO headquarters – and the only WHO spokesperson to have formally commented about CSBD! The SELF article also interviewed Shane Kraus, who was at the center of the ICD-11’s Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD) working group. Excerpt with Lindmeir quotes makes it clear that WHO did not reject “sex addiction”:
In regards to CSBD, the largest point of contention is whether or not the disorder should be categorized as an addiction. “There is ongoing scientific debate on whether or not the compulsive sexual behavior disorder constitutes the manifestation of a behavioral addiction,” WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier tells SELF. “WHO does not use the term sex addiction because we are not taking a position about whether it is physiologically an addiction or not.
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 over an extended period (e.g., six months or more) that causes marked distress or impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
Although this category phenomenologically resembles substance dependence, it is included in the ICD‐11 impulse control disorders section in recognition of the lack of definitive information on whether the processes involved in the development and maintenance of the disorder are equivalent to those observed in substance use disorders and behavioural addictions.
The new WHO paper linked to by sprout (Geoffrey Reed is one of the authors) calls out Prause’s behavior on ICD-11 comment section: Public stakeholders’ comments on ICD‐11 chapters related to mental and sexual health (2019). WHO discusses public comments made on proposed ICD-11 mental disorders, incuding “compulsive sexual behavior disorder” where Nicole Prause posted more comments than everyone else combined (22), disparaging individuals and organizations, making false accusations and engaging in libel. Bold type describes Prause comments:
Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder received the highest number of submissions of all mental disorders (N=47), but often from the same individuals (N=14). The introduction of this diagnostic category has been passionately debated3 and comments on the ICD‐11 definition recapitulated ongoing polarization in the field. Submissions included antagonistic comments among commenters, such as accusations of a conflict of interest or incompetence (48%) or claims that certain organizations or people would profit from inclusion or exclusion in ICD‐11 (43%).
Click here if you want to read the public comments on the ICD-11 CSBD sections (including the hostile/defamatory/disparaging ones). You will need to sign up with a username to view comments.
Prause joins the defamation as herself (instead of RealYBOP):
Inaccuracies by Prause: 1) Everything Sprout tweeted was accurate, 2) WHO never communicated with Sprout (that’s a crazy claim).
RealYBOP (an alias account of Nicole Prause) disparages Staci Sprout.
In reality, hundreds of Twitter accounts made fun of Prause’s inane and factually incorrect tweet claiming that a study had busted “the myth that men watch more porn than women”. For example, in this thread RealYBOP several scientists make fun of RealYBOP (in reponse she argues that being drunk does not impair driving!):
Others – January 29, 2018: Prause threatens therapists who would diagnose sexual behavior addicts using the upcoming “Compulsive sexual behavior disorder” diagnosis in the ICD-11
Her aggression is absurd given the fact that experts who serve on the ICD-11 wrote, in the world’s top psychiatry journal that,
Currently, there is an active scientific discussion about whether compulsive sexual behaviour disorder can constitute the manifestation of a behavioural addiction[5]. For ICD-11, a relatively conservative position has been recommended, recognizing that we do not yet have definitive information on whether the processes involved in the development and maintenance of the disorder are equivalent to those observed in substance use disorders, gambling and gaming[6]. For this reason, compulsive sexual behaviour disorder is not included in the ICD-11 grouping of disorders due to substance use and addictive behaviours, but rather in that of impulse control disorders. The understanding of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder will evolve as research elucidates the phenomenology and neurobiological underpinnings of the condition[7].
Anyone who considers the proposed disorder itself can see that it is intended to encompass sexual behavior addicts by whatever label.
Not so, but before we get to the truth it’s worth noting that her claim is very bold indeed, as 3 Prause studies on porn users failed to control for much of anything, including screening to establish that they were addicted to porn (Prause et al., 2013, Steele et al., 2013, Prause et al., 2015). In fact, these 3 Prause studies chose to ignore numerous standard exclusion criteria normally employed in addiction studies, such as psychiatric conditions, other addictions, psychotropic medications, drug use, other compulsions, depression, religiosity, age, sexuality, gender, etc.
In reality, Seok & Sohn, 2018 carefully screened subjects for “sex addiction” (PHB). PHB was defined by two qualified clinicians based on clinical interviews using PHB diagnostic criteria set in previous studies, Table S1. Seok & Sohn also controlled for multiple variables. From Seok & Sohn, 2018:
We used the following exclusion criteria for PHB and control participants: age over 35 or under 18; other addictions such as alcoholism or gambling addiction, previous or current psychiatric, neurological, and medical disorders, homosexuality, currently using medication, a history of serious head injury, and general MRI contraindications (i.e., having a metal in the body, severe astigmatism, or claustrophobia).
In addition, Seok & Sohn 2018 assessed (controlled for) multiple psychological variables, including depression. From their study:
To identify comorbid tendencies among subjects with PHB, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) (Beck et al., 1996), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) (Beck and Steer, 1990), and Barrett’s Impulsiveness Scale II (BIS-II), as adapted by Lee (1992) were administered. The score of BIS-II was used as a covariate to remove the effects of impulsivity. The BIS-II consists of 35 questions with dichotomized ‘‘yes” (1) or ‘‘no” (0) answers. The total score ranges from 0 to 35, with higher scores indicating greater levels of impulsivity. Information about the demographic and clinical characteristics of all participants is presented in Table 1.
Put simply, Prause lied.
March, 2018 – Libelous claim that Gary Wilson was fired from Southern Oregon University
Gary Wilson’s cyberstalker, Dr. Nicole Prause, prepared a libelous blog piece, which she posted on an adult industry website. It was removed after Wilson tweeted this. (Original url: http://mikesouth.com/scumbags/dr-nicole-prause-destroys-yourbrainonporn-dont-fall-22064/).
The site containing Prause’s libelous blog piece describes itself as follows:
Mike South adult industry blog, the premier destination for adult industry news since 1998. Mike South was a small-time porn producer, who won two AVN awards, turned adult news blog pioneer. South was cited on a host of major news sites, and Gawker.com acknowledged him as “the gonzo king of porn gossip”.
Prause working with Mike South provides clear evidence of Prause’s porn-industry connections:
In her defamatory piece, Prause knowingly, falsely stated that,
[Gary Wilson] claims to have been a “professor in Biology”. In reality, he was supposed to be an undergrad instructor, not a professor, for a lab section at Southern Oregon University. He was fired without pay immediately before completing even a quarter.
In truth, Gary was an Adjunct Instructor at Southern Oregon University and has never claimed to be a professor – although careless journalists and websites have assigned him an array of titles in error over the years – including a now-defunct page on a website that pirates many TEDx talks and describes the speakers carelessly without contacting them. Below is the screenshot Prause posts to “prove” that Gary Wilson has misrepresented his credentials (again, the Gary Wilson page no longer exists). Note: Until Prause produced her “proof,” Gary had never seen this site and has never communicated with its hosts. Thus he never provided a bio, or claims of “professorship” for it. Gary does not seek speaking engagements and has never accepted fees for speaking. Moreover, YBOP accepts no ads, and the proceeds from Gary Wilson’s book go to a registered charity.
On the about page the Keynotes.org website said that it is not an agency and that anyone could upload a video and speaker bio: Keynotes.org is not an agency, but rather, a media site…. Keynotes.org is crowdsourced and fueled by TrendHunter.com, the world’s largest trend spotting website. Thus, it is even possible that Prause uploaded Gary’s TEDx talk with a purposely inaccurate bio in order to fabricate her desired “proof” of misrepresentation. After 5 years of continuous harassment and cyber-stalking, faked documents, libelous assertions, hundreds of tweets, and dozens of usernames with hundreds of comments, nothing would surprise us.
Gary taught at Southern Oregon University on two occasions. He was never “fired,” as can be seen from the employment documents beneath this paragraph. Gary also taught anatomy, physiology and pathology at a number of other schools over a period of two decades, and was certified to teach these subjects by the education departments of both Oregon and California (YBOP About us page). Gary has never said he had a PhD or was a professor.
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Below is the “un-redacted” copy of the document Prause posted on several websites. Prause claimed it meant that Gary was fired, when it actually meant “terminate paychecks” as Gary had to resign due to a medical emergency. The Prause version redacted the COMMENTS section, where SOU stated that Gary resigned due to a health crisis.
Incidentally, Gary receives no compensation from the charity to which his proceeds from his book go. His position as Research Officer is an honorary (volunteer) one. Nor does he serve on the Board of the charity or otherwise determine how it disburses its funds.
He hopes that one day TED will remove the unmerited warning that his critics (headed by Prause) lobbied long and hard to have placed on his very popular TEDx talk. Not only was there comprehensive empirical support for “The Great Porn Experiment” (2012), hundreds of additional studies have been published since 2012 that fully support Gary Wilson’s claims. These 2 pages provide slide by slide support for TGPE:
In addition to placing the redacted employment document and associated libelous statements on a porn industry site, Prause used Quora and Twitter to spread her lies. In doing so, Prause was banned from Quora, and suspend by Twitter. See these two sections from the “Prause page”:
Gary also hopes that Dr. Prause will quit libeling and harassing him and others. Although this new instance of libel (her false claim that Gary was fired) isn’t as shocking as her libelous claim that she has a no-contact court order against Gary, it is equally untrue.
Perhaps it is time for Dr. Prause to grow up and behave like the professional she claims to be.
PS: Southern Oregon University has confirmed that Nicole Prause was the only one who sought his employment records. Email below:
Prause’s usual partner in targeted harassment, David Ley, also falsely stated that Gary Wilson was fired from Southern Oregon university:
Another libelous tweet by Ley, promoting the Mike South article (that was later deleted):
Not only is Tammy Johnson Ellis lying about Wilson being terminated she is also lying about “cherry-picking pieces of research”. In all the hundreds of defamatory posts and tweets Ley, Prause, Ellis, and their allies have never once provided an example of Wilson “cherry-picking” (see YBOP’s main research page for the current state of the research).
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Continuing into 2019: Prause continues to post defamatory tweets claiming that Wilson was “terminated” from SOU, or was a TA (teaching assistant) at Souther Oregon University. In addition, she continues to lie about Wilson misrepresenting his credentials.
April 1, 2019: Prause and David Ley once again lie about about Gary Wilson’s SOU employment.
Background: On March 31, 2016, the TIME cover story (“Porn and the Threat to Virility”), by Belinda Luscombe, featuring Gabe Deem, Nicole Prause, David Ley, Gary Wilson, and many others, was published. It was a year in the making and TIME had the author and other TIME employees (fact checkers) follow-up on claims made by each person interviewed. Once published Prause and her alias “PornHelps” viciously attacked and libeled its author Belinda Luscombe:
On April 1, 2019, both Gary Wilson and Belinda Luscombe weighed in on a long twitter thread discussing validity of the General Social Survey (which claimed that only 45% of men, aged 18-29, had viewed an X-rated movie in the last year). Within a few minutes Prause joined the tread to attack and libel Luscombe and Wilson (long-time Prause ally David Ley also libeled Wilson). In her first of 8 tweets, Prause repeats the same lies documented on this page. She also calls Belinda a fake journalist, engaging fraud.
Since Prause has blocked Belinda, Ley jumps in to “paraphrase” (but omits Prause’s attacks on Belinda). Belinda responds:
David Ley joins in with 2 of his own lies: That Wilson was a TA (teacher assistant) and he was fired.
Truth doesn’t stop Ley or Prause from continuing their Twitter libel-fest, attacking Belinda Luscombe and Wilson.
All provable libel:
Wilson did not drop out of college.
Wilson did not default on his student loans.
Wilson was not a TA. He was ‘Adjunct Faculty.’ (How could Wilson be a TA if he was not attending SOU as a student?)
March 5, 2018 – Prause permanently banned from Quora for harassing Gary Wilson
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 lie-filled hit-piece, Prause posted redacted copies of Gary Wilson employment records and knowingly, falsely stated that Southern Oregon University had fired Wilson. On March 3rd & 4th Prause posted ten more demeaning and untruthful comments about Wilson and his work, all containing a link to her defamatory piece:
Wilson reported Prause to both Quora and Twitter for violation of terms of service and harassment. Both acted upon Wilson’s complaints, removing his employment document and Prause’s false interpretation of it. Confirmation of Quora acting on Wilson’s complaint (not the first violation for harassing Gary Wilson):
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Quora permanently bans Nicole Prause for harassment:
Ongoing – Prause falsely claims that Gary Wilson has misrepresented his credentials
In her defamatory articles, tweets, and Quora posts Prause has knowingly and falsely stated that I claimed to be “professor in biology” or a “neuroscientist”. I was an Adjunct Instructor at Southern Oregon University and taught human anatomy, physiology & pathology at other venues. Although careless journalists and websites have assigned him an array of titles in error over the years (including a now-defunct page on a website that pirates many TEDx talks and describes the speakers carelessly without contacting them) he has always stated that he taught anatomy & physiology. He has never said he had a PhD or was a professor.
Below is the screenshot Prause posts to “prove” that Gary Wilson has misrepresented his credentials (again, the Gary Wilson page no longer exists). Note: Until Prause produced her “proof,” I had never seen this site and had never communicated with its hosts, never uploaded the page in question and never removed it. Thus I certainly never provided a bio, or claims of “professorship.”
On the about page the Keynotes.org website said that it is not an agency and that anyone could upload a video and speaker bio: Keynotes.org is not an agency, but rather, a media site…. Keynotes.org is crowdsourced and fueled by TrendHunter.com, the world’s largest trend spotting website. Thus, it is even possible that Prause uploaded Gary’s TEDx talk with a purposely inaccurate bio in order to fabricate her desired “proof” of misrepresentation. After 7 years of continuous harassment and cyber-stalking, faked documents, libelous assertions, hundreds of tweets, and dozens of usernames with hundreds of comments, nothing would surprise us.
I taught at Southern Oregon University on two occasions. Gary also taught anatomy, physiology and pathology at a number of other schools over a period of two decades, and was certified to teach these subjects by the education departments of both Oregon and California. Gary does not seek speaking engagements and has never accepted fees for speaking. Moreover, YBOP accepts no ads, and the proceeds from Gary Wilson’s book go to a registered charity.
Both Prause & David Ley continue to directly or indirectly claim that I have misrepresented my credentials. Of course, they never provide a single example, but truth is irrelevant to these two. Examples of their cyber harassment:
On social media, Prause has stated that she got my talk cancelled because I presented “fake credentials.” For example, Prause’s tweet attacking the ESSM talk, and her claiming that Gary Wilson was uninvited because he “gave false credentials”:
Continuing into 2019, Prause continues to post defamatory tweets claiming that I was “terminated” from SOU, or was a TA (teaching assistant) at Southern Oregon University. In addition, she continues to lie about me misrepresenting my credentials.
Names Gary Wilson as “The Cyberstalker” on Quora. Prause was ultimately banned from Quora for harassing me. The claims about me misrepresenting myself are lies and based on a web page that no longer exists, and was most likely created by Prause:
Employing a new tactic with a new Twitter account:
August, 2019: The RealYourBrainOnPorn Twitter account (apparently tied to the website currently in Daniel Burgess’s name) posted multiple defamatory tweets stating that I misrepresented my credentials. As with Prause, this Twitter account failed to link to any evidence produced by me (a dead-give away that they fabricated their claim). Instead, RealYBOP pulled a fast one: it posted a screenshot of YBOP Google search, which returned a few media articles copied and posted on YBOP mistakenly describing me as a “professor” (which I have never claimed to be).
A screenshot from the above tweet. Again, the article is reproduced on YBOP, but not authored by YBOP. It incorrectly refers to me as “adjunct professor” (rather than “adjunct faculty”):
RealYBOP used this kind of Google search to capture YBOP’s URL, to make it appear as if I were saying I was a professor. RealYBOP could capture the YBOP URL because a 100 or more articles mentioning Gary Wilson and YBOP are located on YBOP. Most of the YBOP articles are here: ‘Your Brain On Porn’ in the News. Using key words, a Google search returned the same item RealYBOP tweeted. (In fact, almost all the search returns were about Prause falsely claiming I faked my credentials.)
The excerpt where TIME incorrectly refers to me as a “professor”:
The young porn abstainers do have an unlikely guru: Gary Wilson, 59, a former part-time adjunct biologyprofessorat Southern Oregon University and various vocational schools and the author of Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction. His website, yourbrainonporn.com, or more commonly YBOP, is a clearinghouse for information that supports the link between heavy adolescent pornography use and sexual dysfunction. Many people find him through his 2012 TEDx talk, which has more than 6 million views.
The above, and a second article on YBOP (Will quitting porn improve your life?), are the only evidence RealYBOP and Prause provide that I claimed I was a former professor – even though it was a journalistic error, not mine at all. The journalists replaced “adjunct faculty” with “adjunct professor” (oh, the horror!):
That talk was followed by an independent TEDx Talk video last year by Gary Wilson, a past adjunct professor in anatomy at an Oregon university.
Both articles got it wrong. I have never once claimed to a professor or PhD. I taught anatomy and physiology for years, including a few A&P labs at Southern Oregon University. When asked about my time at SOU, I explicitly state I was categorized as “adjunct faculty,” not a professor. In 10 years of giving interviews, I have yet to see even a single article convey my statements entirely accurately in an interview. In reality, many articles are little more than cobbled together copy-and-pastes from other websites, which inevitably propagates errors as well as truth.
Since this minor “former part-time adjunct professor” blunder can be traced the 2016 TIME magazine cover story, let’s look at what I actually emailed to TIME editor Belinda Luscombe.
Where in the chain of communications “adjunct faculty” transformed into “adjunct professor” is anyone’s guess. But clearly it did not come from me.
As documented in other sections (1, 2), Prause and her alias account “PornHelps” had previously harassed and defamed Belinda Luscombe for daring to author the TIME cover story on porn-induced ED. In a 2019 Twitter thread Prause once again claims that I misrepresented my credentials to TIME. Since Prause has blocked Belinda, Ley jumps in to “paraphrase” (but omits Prause’s personal attacks on Belinda). Belinda responds:
TIME fact-checked with Southern Oregon University. Are they the ones who got it (slightly) wrong?
David Ley continues the convo inserting 2 of his own lies: (1) I was a TA (teacher assistant), and (2) I was fired. Belinda Luscombe sets him straight:
August/September, 2019: Realyourbrainonporn (Daniel Burgess? Nicole Prause?) obsessively tweeting that Gary Wilson misrepresented his credentials. RealYBOP even went after Belinda Luscomble – like Prause and her alias (PornHelps) often did:
November, 2019 – RealYBOP: Follower “Abby” inadvertently called me a neuroscientist (English is not Abby’s native language). Prause/RealYBOP immediately jumped on this to lie again:
Note that Prause/RealYBOP asserted that an expose’ will be published within months
I had enough of Prause/RealYBOP lies, and responded with several tweets (even RealYBOP has blocked me). For example, a few of my tweets:
RealYBOP went nuts, creating numerous bogus graphs “showing” that I was harassing their twitter. RealYBOP fails to mention that it has tweeted over 300 times at me, or about me, and is trying to steal my trademark. One of RealYBOP graphs falsely claims I have threatened to sue in 170 tweets posted over the last 12 months:
In reality, I have only threatened to sue in a solitary tweet (the tweet targeting RealYBOP’s initial defmatory tweet:
RealYBOP is a pathological liar and cyberstalker, who’s about to pulled into 3 Federal lawsuits.
March, April, October, 2018: Nicole Prause files bogus DMCA takedown requests in an attempt to hide her harassment and defamation (all were dismissed)
As you can see in the 3 preceding sections, Prause posted Gary Wilson’s Southern Oregon University employment records on Twitter, Quora, and an adult website. In her defamatory posts, Prause knowingly and falsely stated that Gary Wilson was fired and had never previously taught at Southern Oregon University. Wilson was not fired and had previously taught at SOU. These violations resulted in Prause being permanently banned from Quora and suspended from Twitter, with a warning. Wilson sent the adult website (MikeSouth) a DMCA takedown notice, which resulted in the Prause “article” being deleted. (deleted url: http://mikesouth.com/scumbags/dr-nicole-prause-destroys-yourbrainonporn-dont-fall-22064/).
In a clear reprisal for having had her impulsive plans foiled, Prause filed her first DMCA takedown request with my website host on 3/29/2018. For those who may not know, DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 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 this page chronicling her harassment and defamation removed or gutted. Prause is claiming that screenshots of her tweets are copyrighted material. Tweets are generally not copyrightable, and hers are not. Every day thousands of websites and countless Twitter users post screenshots of tweets. A portion of Prause’s first DMCA complaint:
Identification of material that is infringing and which you wish to have taken down or blocked and enough information to allow the OSP to locate the material, e.g., an URL to the offending page;
URL: www.yourbrainonporn.com containing 3,040 references to me. Examples are attached and include pages like: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/nicole-prauses-pdf-her-span-lab-website
A portion of Gary Wilson’s response to Prause’s DMCA takedown request:
It’s disturbing that Prause claims to be a victim here, as I have documented multiple instances of her harassing myself and others – including researchers, medical doctors, therapists, psychologists, former UCLA colleagues, a UK charity, men in recovery, a TIME magazine editor, several professors, IITAP, SASH, Fight The New Drug, the academic journal Behavioral Sciences, and the head of the academic journal CUREUS: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/nicole-prauses-pdf-her-span-lab-website
As for other places where Prause name appears, YBOP contains about 10,000 pages, and it’s a clearinghouse for nearly everything associated with Internet porn use and its effects on the user. Nicole Prause has published multiple studies about porn use and hypersexuality, and by her own admission, is a professional “debunker” of porn addiction and porn-induced sexual problems.
A Google search for “Nicole Prause” + pornography” returns about 11,000 pages. She’s quoted in hundreds of journalistic articles about porn use and porn addiction, in addition to her research related to pornography use. She’s on TV, radio, podcasts, and YouTube channels claiming to have debunked porn addiction with a single (heavily criticized) study. So Prause’s name is inevitable on a site like mine, which functions as a clearinghouse for research and news associated with Internet porn’s effects. YBOP also critiques other questionable research on porn and related subjects. These critiques are not personal, but rather substantive.
This DMCA take-down request is just the latest in a long string of harassment incidents by Prause. Dr. Prause has tweeted about me nearly 100 times, while I never tweet about her (other than correcting a few of her lies). Prause has used dozens of fake usernames to post comments about me on porn recovery forums (https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/nicole-prauses-pdf-her-span-lab-website#ybr). Prause has created an amazon AWS page to libel and harass me and many others (https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/weilerdefamation/PressRelease_DefamationBySenatorWeiler.txt).
Thank you for your attention.
Gary Wilson
After a few back and forths with Wilson the website host suggested, “that the two of you can work out whatever it is that is going on here“. Gary Wilson responded:
Dear ______
Thank you for your message. Dr. Prause already has my contact information, which you are welcome to provide her again. However, she has demanded that I not contact her directly (even though I have never initiated direct contact with her). Unfortunately, therefore, I’m not sure how it would be possible for us to exchange views or reach an accord in the way you propose.
My website is a clearing house for news related to claims about porn’s effects. It is my understanding, based on legal advice, that Tweets are generally not copyrightable, nor are images of them protected by the DMCA. There are no other images relating to Dr. Prause that I’m aware of on YBOP.
Dr. Prause’s behavior and biases, as documented by her Tweets, are essential reading for anyone trying to understand the politics currently influencing the study and reporting of internet porn’s effects. Thus, without solid reason for their removal, they need to remain on YBOP.
I regret that Dr. Prause has tried to involve [you] in her latest harassment efforts.
Best regards,
Gary
The YBOP hosting service responded by “closing the ticket”:
Greetings,
Thank you for the update on this issue. We’ll pass along your contact email address. I hope this leads to an amicable solution for both of you.
At this time we consider this Copyright Infringement matter resolved. I have set this ticket to automatically close in 96 hours while we continue to monitor for additional complaints.
If you have any questions please let me know.
Not to be deterred, Prause acquired the services of DMCA Defender.com, who filed a second DMCA takedown request on April 17th, 2018. Once again, DMCA Defender claimed that screenshots of tweets are somehow copyrighted. They provided no authority to support the assertion, but did provide the urls of each screenshot. Gary Wilson, once again, responded to Prause’s harassment:
Dear _______
In case you need details for your records, I see that my harasser, Nicole Prause, has now hired a company to assist her in spurious DMCA takedown requests. Prause is falsely claiming that screenshots of her tweets and Facebook comments are copyrighted material. Nearly all of the screenshots the company complains of can be found on the YBOP page that documents Prause’s harassment of myself and others – including researchers, medical doctors, therapists, psychologists, former UCLA colleagues, a UK charity, men in recovery, a TIME magazine editor, several professors, IITAP, SASH, Fight The New Drug, the academic journal Behavioral Sciences, and the head of the academic journal CUREUS. See – https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/nicole-prauses-pdf-her-span-lab-website
As stated in response to Prause’s previous DMCA attempt, my website is a clearing house for news related to claims about porn’s effects. It is my understanding, based on legal advice, that Tweets are not copyrightable, nor are images of them protected by the DMCA. With this request, Prause is attempting to remove evidence of her harassment, cyber-stalking and defamation. Unless the law itself changes, the screenshots need to remain.
This DMCA take-down request appears to be the latest in a long string of harassment incidents. Dr. Prause has tweeted about me nearly 100 times, while I never tweet about her (other than correcting a few of her lies). In fact, Prause attacked me yet again on twitter yesterday.
Prause has used dozens of fake usernames to post comments about me on porn recovery forums
Just prior to Prause‘s first DMCA takedown attempt, she placed my employment records from Southern Oregon University on several venues, including Twitter, Quora, and an adult industry website. Prause falsely claimed that I was fired (I wasn’t), and that I had never before taught at SOU (I had). All explained here:
The outcome was that Prause was permanently banned from Quora, was temporarily banned from Twitter. In response to my request, the adult industry website (http://mikesouth.com/scumbags/dr-nicole-prause-destroys-yourbrainonporn-dont-fall-22064/) subsequently deleted Prause’s libelous “article.” This incident apparently spurred Prause to attempt to her two specious DMCA takedown requests.
Again, I regret that she is wasting your time in this way.
Gary Wilson
In the end Wilson’s website host closed both cases, finding no merit in Prause’s DMCA take-down requests. Note: At the same time Prause was attempting her bogus DMCA takedowns, she also deleted hundreds of the tweets were she harassed, libeled, or bullied many individuals and organizations named on this page.
UPDATE: October, 2018 – Prause attempts a third DMCA takedown
On October 10th, 2018 an agent representing Nicole Prause filed a 3rd DMCA takedown request with my website host. The agent requested that several screenshots of Prause tweets be removed from this page. Below is Gary Wilson’s email to his web-host
The current complaint is by an agent for Nicole Prause and has been dealt with before. See this Linode ticket from 6 months ago: ————————————————–
Please re-visit that ticket. This is Dr. Prause’s third unfounded attempt to have evidence of her tweets removed from my website. After she wrote you the first time and failed to achieve her objective, she hired a company to make a request. Now, she has second company attempting a spurious DMCA takedown.
As explained in two previous Linode tickets, Nicole Prause has been harassing and defaming many people, including me, for the past 6 years. In response to Dr. Prause’s widespread harassment I have created the following page to catalog (and refute) her libelous statements and false assertions: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/nicole-prauses-pdf-her-span-lab-website
The current ticket submitted by Dr. Prause, or her agent, is once again claiming that screenshots of her defamatory tweets are covered by the DMCA. As stated 6 months ago, it is my understanding, based on legal advice, that tweets are not copyrightable; nor are images of them protected by the DMCA. Dr. Prause’s behavior and biases, as documented by her tweets, are essential reading for anyone attempting to understand the politics currently skewing the study and reporting of internet porn’s effects. Thus, without solid reason for their removal, they need to remain on YBOP.
Sincerely,
Gary Wilson
In the end Wilson’s website host closed this 3rd case, finding no merit in the agent’s DMCA take-down requests.
Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ~George Orwell
A true academic will be willing to engage in discussion without defaulting to ad hominem insults or ascribing negative intentions to the other side.~ Dr. Debra Soh
Others – April 11, 2018: Prause falsely claims medical journal Cureus is a predatory journal and engages in fraud
Nicole Prause attacked Cureus on Twitter over a paper that it had merely corrected (slightly). Prause claimed that Cureus is a predatory journal which engages in fraud. Both claims are false as predatory journals always charge for publication and are not PubMed indexed. Cureus does not charge authors for publishing, and it is PubMed indexed. Prause, as expected, provided no examples of Cureus engaging in fraud.
Next, John Adler, MD stepped in to refute Prause’s claims. She then falsely accused him of violating a non-existent no-contact order, blocked him on Twitter, and phoned in a spurious complaint of harassment to the Stanford’s Dean’s Office.
John Adler’s final response, before being blocked by Prause:
As Adler pointed out, Prause was given a chance to publish a comment in his Journal but chose instead harass him and his journal on social media and with emails to Stanford University.
May 20, 2018: Ley & Prause falsely claim that Gary Wilson & Don Hilton gave evidence in a case by Chris Sevier
As they often do, Ley and Prause team up to defame and harass those they disagree with. This time they play twitter tag in a pre-planned attack on Gary Wilson, Don Hilton, and Mary Ann Layden. We know it was a pre-planned event as the “evidence” they both tweeted was in a concurrent email with other untruths about Wilson sent from Prause to MDPI (Ley was cc’d on the email).
In Ley’s first tweet he sets things up for Prause by falsely stating that Chris Sevier was the “creator of porn is public health crisis legislation.” In reality, Utah was the first state to pass a resolution about porn and Sevier had nothing to do with it. Ley’s so-called proof is screenshot from this incredibly long page containing four years of court filings full of allegations in the case, Sevier v. Apple inc.
Anyhow, Ley’s chosen excerpt, from 4 years of Sevier’s unhinged rantings in court filings, surrounds Sevier’s belief that “all Gay people are sex addicts”:
Why did David Ley choose this random excerpt about gays from Sevier’s January, 2014 court filing? So he and Prause could falsely assert that Wilson, Hilton, and Layden are anti-gay crazies.
Before we go any further, it must be mentioned that Chris Sevier seems to be universally believed by all who experience a brush with him to be a mentally unstable attention-seeker who chronically lies and harasses individuals and organizations associated with the so-called “anti-pornography movement.” Incidentally, “crazy” supporters are a time-honored strategy for tarnishing and impeding a cause.
Regardless of who his true masters may be, Sevier “makes shit up.” It has grown so bad that organizations (those genuinely behind the “porn as a public health crisis” movement) have been forced to take legal action against Chris Sevier. For example, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) sent Sevier a cease and desist letter and published a statement denouncing Sevier’s actions. An excerpt:
The second matter relates to the author of the HTPA. The bill (sans resolution language) was developed by Chris Sevier, also known as Chris Severe. We have had a difficult relationship with Mr. Sevier over the last several years, to say the least. We have not found him trustworthy in our past dealings and therefore cannot rely on his assertions that those groups and those legislators that he claims are supporters of HTPA are actually in support. That is because, in the past, Sevier has falsely represented that our organization and NCOSE President Patrick Trueman and NCOSE Executive Director Dawn Hawkins are in support of his work. We have demanded that Sevier stop using our names.
In 2015, the office of a United States Senator alerted us to the fact that Sevier was promoting a version of the HTPA at the U. S. Capitol and was representing to U. S. Senate offices that Patrick Trueman was an author of the bill. This was false. A key legal assistant with that senator’s office also said that Sevier was visiting other senate offices claiming that his boss, the senator, was supporting the legislation, which was also false.
Several organizations have contacted us over the past couple years to complain that Sevier was also using their names without authorization and some of those organizations have complained that he was threatening them with legal sanctions when they refused to support him and his work. Several organizations have contacted us over the past couple years to complain that Sevier was also using their names without authorization and some of those organizations have complained that he was threatening them with legal sanctions when they refused to support him and his work.
In 2014, our general counsel had to write a cease and desist letter to Sevier demanding that he cease threatening our organization on various matters and reminding him that as a lawyer he is bound be definitive rules of professional responsibility.
In 2016 Sevier sued the state of Utah following the passage of the above-mentioned resolution developed by our office which declares pornography to be a public health crisis. The lawsuit was ostensibly over the issue of filters (a copy of the complaint is here). It included an extended footnote, part of which we are including here, which attacks NCOSE’s President Patrick Trueman and Executive Director Dawn Hawkins in bizarre terms…..
Very important set of facts: Don Hilton and Mary Ann Layden are on the board of directors of NCOSE and both regularly present at NCOSE conventions and NCOSE-related gatherings. How likely is it that they would be furthering Sevier’s “cause” by contradicting the position taken by NCOSE against Sevier?
With Ley’s set-up, Prause next tweets that Sevier claimed Gary Wilson and “these experts” were ready to testify:
No way! Hilton, Layden and Wilson never agreed to testify for Sevier, and certainly never agreed to testify that “all gay people are sex addicts.” It’s true that “Severe” emailed Gary Wilson in 2014. In Wilson’s response he suggested Severe visit his website for information. Wilson never agreed to testify, and did not respond to further emails from Severe. Don Hilton was asked if he had ever communicated with Sevier/Severe. He said he had not. Put simply, Sevier, and the Prause-Ley tag team, are lying.
With nothing but lies to back him up, Ley caps off the tag-team twitter like this:
Both Prause and Ley are obsessed cyberstalkers, with 300 tweets or more about Gary Wilson alone. Their assertions here are reprehensible and disgusting, yet fully in character.
May 24-27, 2018: Prause creates multiple sock-puppets to edit the MDPI Wikipedia page (and is banned for sock-puppetry & defamation)
In an earlier section we recounted Prause’s harassment of MDPI and its journal Behavioral Sciences. We also chronicled Prause’s long history of employing multiple fake usernames on Wikipedia (which violates its rules) to harass many of the individuals or organizations listed on this page. For example:
Prause’s latest Wikipedia barrage occurred from May 24th to the 27th and involved at least 6 fake usernames (called “sock-puppets” in Wikipedia jargon). The following links take you to all the edits by these particular usernames (“user contributions”):
The first four usernames edited the MDPI Wikipedia page, while 3 of the 6 edited the Nofap Wikipedia page, the Sex Addiction page and the Pornography Addiction page. All 3 pages are obsessions of Prause. Even Wikipedia recognized the usernames as belonging to the same person because all the names were banned for “sock-puppetry.” We can be sure it was Prause editing the MDPI page because:
1) The most recent batch of emails between MDPI and Nicole Prause started on May 22, with MDPI notifying all involved that one minor technical correction and an editorial would be forthcoming. This enraged Prause who responded with a string of demands and threats, followed by false accusations and personal attacks.
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page Nicole Prause has been reverted.
I have images that verify each of the claims (e.g., email from the publisher, email from the listed editor, etc.). RetractionWatch and other outlets are considering writing reviews of it as well, but I cannot be sure those will materialize. How is best to provide such evidence that verifies the claims? As embedded image? Written elsewhere with images and linked?
Note: In her concurrent emails to MDPI, Prause cc’d RetractionWatch, apparently to threaten MDPI with public retaliation. Another “NeuroSex” edit (lies) related to Gary Wilson and to Park et al., 2016:
In 2016, another MDPI journal, Behavioral Sciences, published a review paper claiming pornography caused erectile dysfunction. Six scientists independently contacted MDPI concerned about fraud and other issues in the article, initiating an independent review by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE recommended retracting the article.[31] The listed paper editor, Scott Lane, denied having served as the editor. Thus, the paper appears not to have undergone peer-review. Further, two authors had undisclosed conflicts of interest. Gary Wilson’s association with The Reward Foundation did not properly identify it as an activist, anti-pornography organization. Wilson also had posted extensively in social media that the study was “by the US Navy”, although the original paper stated that it did not reflect the views of the US Navy. The other author, Dr. Andrew Doan, was an ophthalmologist who ran an anti-pornography ministry Real Battlefield Ministries, soliciting donations for their speaking.[32] Further, the Committee on Publication Ethics determined that the cases were not properly, ethically consented for inclusion. MDPI issued a correction for some of these issues,[33] but has refused to post corrections for others to date as described by Retraction Watch.[31]
Several of the above lies debunked:
There were not 6 scientists – only Prause contacted MDPI.
My association with The Reward Foundation was fully disclosed from the beginning. As explained earlier, my affiliation with The Reward Foundation (TRF) was always clearly stated, both in the initial Behavioral Sciences article and in the recent correction (the original PubMed version). The purpose of the newly published correction was to counter Dr. Prause’s incessant defamatory claims that I receive money from TRF, and that I make money from my book (my proceeds for which, in fact, go to the charity)
I posted that the paper involved 7 US Navy doctors. The Navy had no problems with my comments.
Dr. Andrew Doan is both an MD and a PhD (Neuroscience – Johns Hopkins), is the former of Head of “Addictions and Resilience Research” in the Department of Mental Health at the Naval Medical Center. (He has since been transferred and promoted, and has different responsibilities.) Doan has authored multiple papers on behavioral addiction/pathologies relating to technologies (in some cases with a co-author of the paper you have written about here). In short, he is a qualified senior author. Those other papers can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=doan+klam. His non-profit, Real Battlefield Ministries (RBM), did not discuss pornography prior to publication of the paper. Even if RBM had presented on pornography it would not have been a conflict of interest.
As described above, COPE’s decision was hypothetical and did not apply to our paper as the US Navy doctors more than complied with their Naval Medical Center – San Diego’s IRB consent rules. The Naval Medical Center San Diego’s IRB policy does not consider case reports of less than four patients in a single article to be human subject research and does not require the patients to consent to inclusion in an article. Although the researchers were not required to obtain consent, for two cases, verbal and written consents were obtained. In the third case where anonymity was unlikely to be compromised, no written consent was obtained. Incidentally, at Dr. Prause’s insistence, after the paper was published, the actions of the Navy co-authors with respect to this paper were thoroughly reviewed in an independent Navy investigation. Result? I have a copy of the official report by a Navy lawyer affirming that the co-authors complied with all the IRB’s rules.
——————————————
NeuroSex edit #2: In 2015, the MDPI journal ”[[Behavioral Sciences (journal)|Behavioral Sciences ]]” published a paper ”Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports”. It was widely promoted during political attempts in the USA to define pornography as a public health hazard. However, it was soon discovered that many fraudulent statements appeared in the paper, often claiming the opposite of what a cited study had described
Gary Wilson comment:
To begin with, NeuroSex (Prause) got the publication date wrong: our paper was published in August, 2016, not in 2015. Second, our paper was not widely promoted. Third, no fraudulent statements were made and we cited all references correctly. A bit of background is in order.
Pre-MDPI history
The story of Prause’s efforts relating to the paper that was ultimately published as Park et a l., 2016 actually begins before the involvement of MDPI and Behavioral Sciences. An earlier, much shorter version of the paper, with the same authors and author affiliations as it had when later submitted to Behavioral Sciences, was first submitted to Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine (YJBM). It’s worth reviewing certain conduct in connection with this paper when it was under consideration by YJBM.
One of the 2 reviewers of the paper gave it a scathing review with 70+ criticisms, and it was duly rejected. Around the time that YJBM rejected the paper, a “Janey Wilson” began harassing my book publisher, Commonwealth Publishing, and the registered charity to which I donate all of my share of my book’s proceeds (recounted in this section). I am the author of Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction.
Note: The submission to YJBM was the only place my affiliation with the charity, The Reward Foundation (TRF), could be found, as it was nowhere public. In other words, apart from the Board of TRF and myself, only the YJBM editor and its two reviewers knew about this affiliation. And yet, “Janey” claimed to have evidence of this affiliation, and used my affiliation to fabricate various allegations of wrongdoing by TRF and me.
Later, Dr. Prause submitted her scathing YJBM review with 70+ criticisms to a regulatory board (as part of an effort to have the published paper retracted), thus confirming she had indeed provided the YJBM with an unfavorable review of the paper. (Further evidence that she was a YJBM reviewer turned up during the Behavioral Sciences submission process, as recounted below.) Incidentally, Prause’s actions are a clear violation of COPE’s rules for peer reviewers (Section 5 of the “Guidelines on Good Publication Practice”), which require reviewers to keep confidential anything they learn through the review process.
YJBM was informed of (1) the harassing behavior engaged in by “Janey,” (2) “Janey’s” possible true identity, and (3) the fact that “Janey” may have violated COPE’s rules for peer reviewers by making public confidential information about me.
The paper was promptly accepted by YJBM…and then not published in that journal after all, due to the journal’s decision that it was too late to make the requested revisions and still meet the print deadline for YJBM’s special “Addiction” issue.
Behavioral Sciences
A revised and updated version of the paper was then submitted to the journal Behavioral Sciences. After a few rounds of reviews and further restructuring it was accepted as a review of the literature, with case studies. Its final form was quite different from the original YJBM submission.
During this process, the paper was reviewed by no fewer than 6 reviewers. Five passed it, some with some suggested revisions, and one harshly rejected it (It was Prause again, as she later revealed).
Phase one of this process unfolded as follows: The paper was reviewed twice, one of them a harsh rejection, one favorable. Puzzled by the harsh rejection, Behavioral Sciences sent the paper out for review to 2 other reviewers. These reviewers passed the paper. Behavioral Sciences cautiously rejected the paper but allowed the authors to “revise and resubmit.” As part of this process, the authors were given all of the comments by the reviewers (but not their identities). The reviewers’ concerns were thoroughly addressed, point by point (available upon request).
From these comments, it became evident that the “harsh reviewer” of the Behavioral Sciences paper had also reviewed the paper at YJBM.About a third of the 77 points raised did not relate to the Behavioral Sciences submission at all.They referred to material that was only present in the earlier version of the paper, the one that had been submitted to YJBM.
In other words, the harsh reviewer had cut and pasted dozens of criticisms from a review done of an earlier iteration of the paper at another journal (YJBM), which no longer had any relevance to the paper submitted to Behavioral Sciences! This is highly unprofessional. Moreover, Prause eventually revealed herself as the author of these criticisms in her complaint to the medical boards (see above), in which she shared her YJBM review of the obsolete version of the paper. (Apparently, she never realized the YJBM paper had been accepted by YJBM once her review was disqualified.)
Incidentally, when Prause was asked to review the paper at Behavioral Sciences she apparently did not reveal that she had already reviewed the paper at another journal. It would have been standard reviewer etiquette to reveal her earlier review effort.
Let me summarize Prause’s multiple objections to our paper. Again, 25 or so of them had nothing whatsoever to do with the Behavioral Sciences paper Prause had been asked by Behavioral Sciences to review. These items referred to its first submission at YJBM. This alone should disqualify the entire review from further consideration.
Yet, we carefully combed through each comment looking for any useful insights, and wrote a comprehensive response to all 77 comments for Behavioral Sciences and its editors. Almost all of the remaining 50 critical comments were either scientifically inaccurate, groundless, or were simply false statements. Some were repetitive. In short, while reviewers’ comments always improve any paper to some degree, there really wasn’t the need to “fix” much of the paper itself in light of Prause’s comments. What we did do was strengthen the paper itself with 50 more citations, lest other readers make any of the same errors she had.
The paper was rewritten and revised. Next, two more reviewers reviewed and passed it with various suggestions, including a suggestion to restructure it as a “review with case studies.” Satisfied that all legitimate concerns had been addressed, Behavioral Sciences published the paper.
Immediately after publication in August, 2016 Prause insisted that MDPI retract Park et al., 2016. The professional response to scholarly articles one disapproves of is to publish a comment outlining any objections. Behavioral Sciences’s parent company, MDPI, invited Prause to do this. She declined. That’s right, Prause was given full opportunity to critique the paper in Behavioral Sciences – and she ran the other way.
Instead she unprofessionally turned to threats and social media (and most recently the Retraction Watch blog) to bully MDPI into retracting Park et al. In addition, she informed MDPI that she had filed complaints with the American Psychological Association and the doctors’ medical boards. She also pressured the doctors’ medical center and Institutional Review Board, causing a lengthy, thorough investigation, which found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the paper’s authors.
Prause concurrently complained repeatedly to COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics). COPE finally wrote MDPI with a hypothetical observation relating to (Prause’s narrative about) consents obtained for the case studies in the paper, and a question about retraction. MDPI thoroughly re-investigated the consents obtained by the doctors who authored the papers, as well as US Navy policy around obtaining consents. Written consents had been obtained for the two extensive case studies, and the third case study involved so little identifying information that a written consent was deemed unnecessary. On this basis, MDPI declined to retract the paper.
May, 2018: Prause lies about Gary Wilson in emails to MDPI, David Ley, Neuro Skeptic, Adam Marcus of Retraction Watch, and COPE
In the May, 2018 email exchanges with MDPI & COPE, Prause copied bloggers who are positioned to damage the reputations of MDPI in the media, if they choose. Ley blogs on Psychology Today and has often served as the Mouth of Prause. Neuro Skeptic has a popular blog that disparages legitimate (and sometimes dubious) research. Adam Marcus writes for Retraction Watch. Prause also copied Iratxe Puebla, who works for COPE, an organization that addresses publication ethics. Already, Adam Marcus of Retraction Watch has taken the bait without adequate investigation.
In her defamatory articles, tweets, and Quora posts Prause has knowingly and falsely stated that I (Gary Wilson) claimed to be “professor in biology” “doctor” or a “neuroscientist.” I was an Adjunct Instructor at Southern Oregon University and taught human anatomy, physiology & pathology at other venues. Although careless journalists and websites have assigned me an array of titles in error over the years (including a now-defunct page on a website that pirates many TEDx talks and describes the speakers carelessly without contacting them) I have always stated that I taught anatomy & physiology. I have never said I had a PhD or was a professor. Prause told the same lie to the email recipients:
PRAUSE EMAIL #1 (5-1-2018)
On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 10:11 PM, Nicole Prause >
Additionally, Mr. Wilson is now using this publication to claim to be a doctor online to unsuspecting patients (attached).
Below is the screenshot Prause uses to “prove” that I have misrepresented my credentials (again, this Gary Wilson page no longer exists). Note: Until Prause produced her “proof,” I had never seen this site and had never communicated with its hosts, never uploaded the page in question and never removed it. Thus I certainly never provided a bio, or claims of “professorship.”
I taught at Southern Oregon University on two occasions. I also taught anatomy, physiology and pathology at a number of other schools over a period of two decades, and was certified to teach these subjects by the education departments of both Oregon and California. I do not seek speaking engagements and have never accepted fees for speaking. Moreover, YBOP accepts no ads, and the proceeds from my book go to a registered charity.
On the “about” page the Keynotes.org website said that it is not an agency and that anyone could upload a video and speaker bio: Keynotes.org is not an agency, but rather, a media site…. Keynotes.org is crowdsourced and fueled by TrendHunter.com, the world’s largest trend spotting website. Again, I’ve never uploaded anything to the site, and I have no idea who uploaded this page (or ordered it removed).
The above screen-shot was part of a larger article by Prause where she falsely claimed that I was fired from Southern Oregon University: March, 2018 – Libelous Claim that Gary Wilson Was Fired. In her article, which was posted on a pornography-related site and Quora, Prause published redacted versions of my Southern Oregon University employment records, falsely stating I was fired and had never before taught at SOU. As with her claims surrounding The Reward Foundation, Prause lied about the true content of what’s in the redacted documents. By the way, David Ley also tweeted the Prause article several times, saying I was fired from SOU (screenshots on the page).
In an email to MDPI, COPE, Ley, Neuroskeptic, Adam Marcus of Retraction Watch and others Prause falsely claimed that I had received money from The Reward Foundation.
It appears Wilson did receive money from The Reward Foundation. Attached is The Reward Foundation Annual Report. Per item C6 referring to travel that describes Gary Wilson’s travel totaling 9,027 pounds.
I request that any correction include this financial COI, or time be allotted to properly demonstrate that this was not a financial conflict of interest.
Nicole Prause, Ph.D. Liberos
Prause is lying. I have never received any money from The Reward Foundation. I forwarded Prause’s claim to Darryl Mead, Chair of The Reward Foundation, who debunked Prause’s claims here. As thoroughly explained in that section Gary Wilson donates the proceeds of his book to The Reward Foundation. Wilson accepts no money, and has never received a dime for any of his efforts. YBOP accepts no ads and Wilson has accepted no fees for speaking.
Well, it’s 2019 and Prause is finally being for defamation. In a sworn affidavit filed in Federal Court, Gary Wilson stated (under penalty of perjury) that (1) Nicole Prause used a false identity (Janey Wilson) to defame and harass Wilson, his publisher, and The Reward Foundation, (2) that Prause lied in emails, on Wikipedia and in public comments when stating that Gary Wilson received financial compensation from The Reward Foundation.
In many of her emails to MDPI (and others), Prause mentioned her “77 criticisms” and falsely claimed that they had not been addressed. This was just the latest:
On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 9:36 AM, Nicole Prause>
I provided a 77 point critique prior to publication that was, true to the predatory journal lists MDPI appeared on, was ignored.
This means Prause was one of two reviewers of the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine submission – and thus “Janey Wilson.” As explained, many of the 77 so-called problems were carelessly copied and pasted from Prause’s review of the YJBM submission; 25 of them had nothing to do with the Behavioral Sciences submission. In other words, the only reviewer to condemn the paper had cut and pasted dozens of criticisms from a review done at another journal (YJBM), which no longer had any relevance to the paper submitted to Behavioral Sciences. This is highly unprofessional.
Even apart from that glaring irregularity, few of the 77 problems could be considered legitimate. Yet, we carefully combed through each comment mining for useful insights, and wrote a comprehensive response to all comments for Behavioral Sciences and its editors. Almost all of the remaining 50 critical comments were either scientifically inaccurate, groundless, or were simply false statements. Some were repetitive. The authors provided MDPI with a point by point response to each so-called problem.
May, June 2018: In emails to Retraction Watch, in the ICD-11 comments section, and on Wikipedia, Prause and her sockpuppets falsely claim that Wilson received 9,000 pounds from The Reward Foundation
Starting in May, 2018 Prause added a new wrinkle to her claims, namely that, “The Reward Foundation (RF) paid Wilson 9,027 pounds.” This is completely false, even though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Wilson being paid by anyone for anything. The crazy part is that Wilson donates the proceeds from his book to the RF. In other words, Prause is claiming that Wilson gives money to the RF so they can give it back to him at a later date. Why Wilson would choose to play trans-Atlantic ping pong with his money in this way, Prause has yet to explain. Bottom line: Prause is lying.
This all started with Prause’s email to journal publisher MDPI, COPE, David Ley, Neuroskeptic, Adam Marcus & Ivan Oransky of Retraction Watch (and others) that, based on the charity’s recent public filing (with a name redacted, as is standard), expense reimbursements paid to a charity officer were in fact paid to Wilson. Prause, wrongfully assumed (and publicized) that Wilson’s name was behind the redaction when it wasn’t!
It appears Wilson did receive money from The Reward Foundation. Attached is The Reward Foundation Annual Report. Per item C6 referring to travel that describes Gary Wilson’s travel totaling 9,027 pounds.
I request that any correction include this financial COI, or time be allotted to properly demonstrate that this was not a financial conflict of interest.
Nicole Prause, Ph.D. Liberos
Two days later, one of Prause’s seven wikipedia sockpuppets attempted the following edit on MDPI Wikipedia page, assigning Wilson a fabricated, defamatory reason for receiving the money (that he had never, in fact, received):
NeuroSex linked to a redacted document, claiming that Gary Wilson was paid 9,000 pounds by Scotish charity The Reward Foundation. Two days earlier Prause falsely claimed to journal publisher MDPI (and others) that, based on the charity’s recent public filing (with a name redacted, as is standard), expense reimbursements paid to a charity officer were in fact paid to Wilson. Prause has not checked her facts, and she is mistaken (again). Wilson has never received any money from The Reward Foundation. Gary Wilson forwarded Prause’s claim to Darryl Mead, Chair of The Reward Foundation. His response is above:
From: Foundation Reward <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2018 8:17 AM
To: gary wilson
Subject: Re: Concerns raised to the attention of COPE by Nicole Prause. Manuscript ID behavsci-133116
Dear Gary:
I have looked into this. Prause said:
On 22/05/2018 20:48, Nicole Prause wrote: It appears Wilson did receive money from The Reward Foundation. Attached is The Reward Foundation Annual Report. Per item C6 referring to travel that describes Gary Wilson’s travel totaling 9,027 pounds.
I request that any correction include this financial COI, or time be allotted to properly demonstrate that this was not a financial conflict of interest.
This is a reference to our 2016-17 Annual Accounts. A version of the accounts with identity redaction was published by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator and can be downloaded at https://www.oscr.org.uk/search/charity-details?number=SC044948#results, copy attached. This redaction process is done by OSCR without input from the named charity.
The relevant section with redaction reads as per this screen shot.
The individual referred to in C6 is Darryl Mead, the Chair of the Reward Foundation. I am that person and I made the claim for reimbursement of travel and other costs.
The original document reads as follows:
There is no reference to Gary Wilson in any part of the expenditure for the Reward Foundation because there were no payments to him.
With best wishes,
Darryl
In summary, Prause falsely accused Wilson of receiving funds from The Reward Foundation for a fabricated purpose. She then publicized this falsehood to MDPI, COPE, RetractionWatch, and others, using the redacted document she submitted. Then sockpuppet NeuroSex attempted to post these lies to Wikipedia, which failed.
Update, 6-7-2018:
For no reason in particular, Prause posted a comment on the ICD-11 about Gary Wilson. [Would be readers must create a username to view comments.] In this comment Prause repeats the above lies:
Prause not only repeated her original lie, she added several more of her usual lies about Wilson (all debunked on this very page). Prause also says that she has filed a second complaint against Staci Sprout with Washington. This part is true, as second harassing complaint was filed against Sprout and immediately dismissed.
In the 6 years since Prause’s cyber-aliases started claiming that Wilson was reported to the police, Prause has failed to provide any documentation of her purported police reports. As for the LAPD & UCLAPD, both have said that Prause never filed anything with their departments. In October, 2018 Gary Wilson filed a freedom of information request with the FBI and the FBI confirmed that Prause was lying: no report has ever been filed on Wilson. See – November, 2018: FBI affirms Nicole Prause’s fraud surrounding defamatory claims. Gary Wilson has been patiently waiting since July, 2013 (1) to discover what exactly he was reported for, (2) to be contacted by “the authorities.” Neither has occurred because Prause is lying.
Over the next few days Nicole Prause posted 3 more libelous comments on the ICD-11 attacking Gary Wilson and continuing to assert falsely that he is a paid employee of The Reward Foundation. Darryl Mead, the Chair of The Reward Foundation, eventually responded (see above).
Update:In a sworn affidavit filed in Federal Court, Gary Wilson stated (under penalty of perjury) that (1) Nicole Prause used a false identity (Janey Wilson) to defame and harass Wilson, his publisher, and The Reward Foundation, (2) that Prause lied in emails, on Wikipedia and in public comments when stating that Gary Wilson received financial compensation from The Reward Foundation.
Put simply, Nicole Prause is engaged in provable defamation (see you in the upcoming defamation lawsuits: 1, 2).
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March 3, 2020: Cyberstalker RealYBOP has posted about 300 tweets about me. In this exmaple she lies about the Reward Foundation. Her defamatory tweet appears to be claiming that The Reward Foundation “paid” to have an article placed in The Sunday Times. That’s a lie. In reality, The Times paid TRF to write an article. TRF did not solicit The Times – The Times solicited TRF. I gues Nikky is mad because The Times isn’t interested in her opinions on porn.
In my 2 sworn affidavits filed in federal defamation suits I chronicle Prause libelous claims and ongoing cyberstalking of The Reward Foundation, my publisher, the Scottish Charity register, and MDPI:
Others – May 24-27, 2018: Prause creates multiple sock-puppets to edit the Nofap Wikipedia page
As described above, from May 24th to the 27th, 2018 Prause employed six fake usernames to edit the Wikipedia pages of her ongoing obsessions: MDPI, Nofap, Sexual Addiction, and Pornography Addiction. Even though Prause’s main target was MDPI, two of her sock-puppets took the time to attack Nofap, with edits and defamatory comments. As she has done in Twitter comments and in personal attacks on Alexander Rhodes, Prause called members of Nofap dangerous misogynists.
20:16, 25 May 2018 (diff | hist) . . (+367) . . NoFap (→Reception: Added peer-reviewed study about the verified dangers of NoFap)
20:14, 25 May 2018 (diff | hist) . . (-492) . . NoFap (→Reception: Removed a reference to an unpublished “study” only in a German newspaper and not published anywhere.)
03:28, 24 May 2018 (diff | hist) . . (+379) . . Pornography addiction (→Support groups: NoFap community has recently raised security concerns paralleling Incels and due to this paper discovering considerable misogynist attacks in NoFap. I suggest removal, but at least should warn people community is not safe.)
Another Prause edit involved deletion of a yet to be published paper by researcher Alec Sproten – How Abstinence Affects Preferences (2016). Sproten’s preliminary results, like a handful of other studies, reported significant benefits by participants who ceased using porn. Excerpts from Sproten’s article:
Results of the First Wave – Main Findings
The length of the longest streak participants performed before taking part in the survey correlates with time preferences. The second survey will answer the question if longer periods of abstinence render participants more able to delay rewards, or if more patient participants are more likely to perform longer streaks.
Longer periods of abstinence most likely cause less risk aversion (which is good). The second survey will provide the final proof.
Personality correlates with length of streaks. The second wave will reveal if abstinence influences personality or if personality can explain variation in the length of streaks.
Results of the Second Wave – Main Findings
Abstaining from pornography and masturbation increases the ability to delay rewards
Participating in a period of abstinence renders people more willing to take risks
Abstinence renders people more altruistic
Abstinence renders people more extroverted, more conscientious, and less neurotic
Unfortunately, Prause’s deletion of the Sproten study has not yet been reversed, and the Kris Taylor paper remains. More evidence that Wikipedia editors game the system, and sockpuppets rule.
Others – May 24-27, 2018: Prause creates multiple sock-puppets to edit “Sex Addiction” & “Porn Addiction” Wikipedia pages
The previous two sections chronicle Prause’s Wikipedia-based attacks on two of her favorite targets: MDPI and Nofap. In Prause’s recent 4-day Wikipedia blitz three of her sockpuppets edited two other objects of her disdain: the Wikipedia pages on “Sexual Addiction” and “Pornography Addiction” (which her numerous sockpuppets had previously edited over the years). In her many edits Prause attacks familiar targets such as Dr. Todd Love, Fight The New Drug, therapist Staci Sprout, Dr. Patrick Carnes, CEO of MDPI, the American Society for Addiction Medicine, and a protein – DeltaFosB.
Here we present selected edits and remarks from three sockpuppets, followed by our comments:
Comment: Once again, Prause is attacking therapist Staci Sprout, who Prause harassed and defamed in a groundless complaint filed with Washington State Dept. of Health. The State of Washington dismissed the empty complaint (without an investigation) and closed the case. Prause has also attacked Staci Sprout on Twitter and on the ICD-11 comment page for “Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder.”
02:16, 25 May 2018 (diff | hist) . . (-172) . . Sexual addiction (→Controversy: info-graphic was created by Mormon group Fight The New Drug, an anti-pornography organization. Not neutral and does not accurately reflect history, such as including individuals with no field influence
02:20, 25 May 2018 (diff | hist) . . (-3,460) . . Sexual addiction (→Mechanisms: Large section about FOSB made no mention of link to sex and had about 7 broken links (numbers clearly pasted from some other source, not properly attributed))
02:01, 25 May 2018 (diff | hist) . . (-356) . . m Sexual addiction (→Mechanisms: Lead claim of “wide acceptance” as addiction in humans linking to only animal studies is more activism on this entry. False
Comment: The above two edits and comments involve DeltaFosB, which Prause sockpuppets have been complaining about for over 3 years now (see 2 of Prause’s earlier posting about DeltaFosB: “PatriotsAllTheWay” & “NotGaryWilson”). This is nothing new as Prause and David Ley’s 2014 opinion piece on porn addiction railed against DeltaFosB – with the foremost DeltaFosB researcher saying that Ley & Prause’s commentary sounded like a “bad Saturday Night Live parody.”
03:16, 24 May 2018 (diff | hist) . . (-1,180) . . Pornography addiction (→Diagnostic status: Todd Love is described as an “addiction researcher”. He has zero research training and no data publications. He represents another false appeal to authority to create a false narrative. The reference describing him falsely as a scientist is removed.) (Tag: references removed)
And I will be quite happy to see your ‘bullet in the barrel’ critique be thrown out the window.
A few comments on Ley’s lies and spin.
Behavioral Sciences is PubMed indexed, unlike the journals that have accepted Ley’s 2 opinion pieces (e.g. Porn Studies Journal, Current Sexual Health Reports).
Typical Ley. Among the eight authors were seven physicians with the following expertise: two urologists, a neuroscientist, and two psychiatrists, and a general medical physician.” One author, Dr. Klam, is Director of Mental Health at the Naval Medical Center – San Diego. As for the ophthalmologist, Dr. Doan is both an MD and a PhD (Neuroscience – Johns Hopkins), is the former of Head of “Addictions and Resilience Research” in the Department of Mental Health at the Naval Medical Center. In addition to the papers on internet pornography, Doan has authored multiple papers on behavioral addiction/pathologies relating to technologies, (he published peer-reviewed studies before he evengraduating from high school).
Ley thinks it was egregious for the doctors to suggest giving up the sex toy and porn (even though the sailor was severely distress about his toy/porn induced sexual problems). An excerpt from the case-report exposing Ley’s advice as malpractice:
More evidence that Ley should handing out sexual advice.
A comment by a Prause alias (she dares not comment as herself as she is involved in 2 lawsuits as of August, 2016):
An idiotic comment as Park et al., 2016 was not a study, but a review. As exposed on the current page, Prause is lying about ethics problems and the case reports. But what do you expect from MDPI’s cyberstalker?
Another comment by a Prause alias:
As above, Park was a review, so it did not present experimental data. However, it contained massive data throughout and 200 references.
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January, 2017 (and earlier): Prause employs multiple sock puppets (including “NotGaryWilson“) to edit Wikipedia pages
The use of multiple user accounts to edit Wikipedia pages violates Wikipedia rules and is referred to as “sock puppetry” (or simply “socking”). We have already revealed one of Prause’s sock puppets, who edited the Belinda Luscombe Wikipedia page that day after TIME published Luscombe’s cover story, “Porn and the Threat to Virility,” which Prause disapproved of. It’s clear from the comments, content, and usernames that Nicole Prause has created several more accounts to edit Wikipedia articles, such as “pornography addiction,” “sex addiction” and “effects of pornography.”
First, here’s a list of edits done by a Prause sock puppet identified only by an IP address (75.82.147.215). Note the comment associated with this one particular edit:
Naming “Gary Wilson” is a dead give-away that the above user account is Nicole Prause. Reality Check: Gary Wilson makes no money related to this endeavor, and he did not add the DeltaFosB section to the “Pornography Addiction” Wiki page. As time passed, Prause fell back into her usual pattern of creating usernames with 3-4 capitalized words. For example:
While the above edits suggest that all are Prause as they consistently attack IITAP, Carnes, the addiction model, and falsely claim there’s no science supporting either porn or sex addiction. If there was any doubt, two of them once again comment about Gary Wilson and DeltaFosB. First, a telling “PatriotsAllTheWay” comment:
A few comments: 1) All of Gary Wilson’s profits from the sales of his book go to charity, and his website is otherwise entirely non-commercial; 2) Contrary to Prause’s claim, DeltaFosB is present in humans and all neuroscientists studying its mechanisms agree that DeltaFosb is involved with multiple physiological functions, including sensitization to sexual activity and addiction.
A Wikipedia “user-page” is automatically created for every username that edits a Wikipedia article. “NotGaryWilson” is the only Prause sock puppet to have made a comment on its user page. Here’s what “NotGaryWilson” wrote about the “Sex Addiction” article:
As with the “Pornography Addiction” Wikipedia page, Gary Wilson in fact added none of the DeltaFosB material to the “Sexual Addiction” Wikipedia page. As stated, Wilson is paid by no one, and makes no money on this endeavor. Finally, only non-academics David Ley and Nicole Prause ever assert that DeltaFosB is not involved with initiating addiction-related brain changes. (Prause is particularly obsessed discrediting with DeltaFosB.) Contrary to their unsupported rantings, DeltaFosB’s role in addiction and sensitization is well established in both animal and human studies (see list 1 and list 2 for DeltaFosB studies). A veteran Wikipedia editor responds to the above comments by “NotGaryWilson”:
And,
Don’t hold your breath for broad (legitimate) support for unsupported claims about Wilson or DeltaFosB. Sometimes Prause uses an IP address as a username. This Wikipedia user only edited “Sex Addiction” blabbering on about “FosB” and CSATs & IITAP – two of Prause’s favorite targets:
It appears that Nicole Prause employed two additional usernames to edit the Fight The New Drug Wikipedia page (FTND is one of Prause’s favorites targets):
What makes us suspect that both usernames are Nicole Prause? Not only did both usernames edit only the FTND Wikipedia page, both created the section featuring Prause’s often-tweeted op-ed that appeared in the Salt Lake City Tribune. Prause wrote the critique of Fight the New Drug’s previous op-ed, then persuaded 7 of her PhD buddies to sign off on it. Prause’s op-ed cited only a few irrelevant citations, while offering no neuroscience-based studies. It also made several false statements about the content and references in the earlier FTND op-ed. Several experts responded with this dismantling of the Prause op-ed: Op-ed: Who exactly is misrepresenting the science on pornography? (2016).
In late November, 2017 Prause once again asked the ICD-11 to delete the proposed diagnosis of “Compulsive sexual behavior disorder” (sex addiction, porn addiction). Her entire argument on the ICD rested upon a press release by 3 non-profit kink organizations (Center for Positive Sexuality, National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, and The Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance), and AASECT’s 2016 proclamation. (In addition, she falsely claimed that ATSA supported her views.) YBOP wrote an article dismantling the “group position” paper opposing porn and sex addiction (November, 2017). A few days later Prause used two new usernames to edit the Sex Addiction Wikipedia page adding content that mirrors her ICD-11 request to abolish “Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder”:
In a rare turn of events, the Nicole Prause Wikipedia page was created by a Wikipedia employee. Whatever this employee’s motivation, there is little doubt that two primary usernames editing thsi page are Prause herself:
As pointed out above, Prause’s usernames often conatin 2-3 capitalized words. The last user name – OMer1970 – likely stands for “Orgasmic Meditation”, as this user’s edits are about Prause’s study on the effects of “Orgasmic Mediation”(commonly called “OM”). Prause is receiving a whole lot of money to study “the benefits” of OM, which involves a man straddling a woman and stroking clitoris. A 3-day workshop OM workshop costs $3,999.00 per person (if paid in full). It also appears that Prause may have obtained porn performers as subjects through another porn industry interest group, the Free Speech Coalition. The FSC-obtained subjects were allegedly used in her hired-gun study on the heavily tainted and very commercial “Orgasmic Meditation” scheme (which is now being investigated by the FBI).
Others – April, 2017: Prause insults Professor Gail Dines, PhD, perhaps for joining the Op-ed: Who exactly is misrepresenting the science on pornography? (plus updates)
Prause, who has not been affiliated with any academic institution since early 2015, attacks Professor Dines in a Tweet:
This public insult was part of a thread where Prause scathingly assailed a university student in Sweden for endeavoring to study abuse of porn performers (later deleted by Prause).
Another tweet calling both Gail Dines and Fight The New Drug (FTND) liars and “anti-LGBT” and “anti-woman”:
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The @BrainOnPorn twitter is believed to be Prause. who uses it to disparage the same people Prause does, while promoting the porn industry’s agenda. Here, RealYBOP trolls an account that quotes Gail Dines (April 22, 2019).