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It's not so much that I'm trying to set a 'bar' that must be crossed to meet my personal standards...

But that's exactly what you're doing. Until the inherently "mushy" subject of human behavior can become as predictable as the subject of physics, there will likely not be an empirical study on the subject to fit your description.

Again, the people who have personal experience with the effects of pornography, either upon themselves or a loved one, have no need for studies. For them, there is no need for a scientific explanation of the profound change in personality which they, themselves have either experienced or witnessed. Truth does not depend upon science for its validity. Too many scientists believe the two are synonymous.

BTW, the last link in my previous post was not a very good one vis-a-vis Dr. Cline's research. This one is much better.

"But that's exactly what you're doing. Until the inherently "mushy" subject of human behavior can become as predictable as the subject of physics, there will likely not be an empirical study on the subject to fit your description."

Indeed, there will not be any single study using currently-known methodology which will satisfy what I've laid out as what I believe ought be the standard. Think about it though - if we're picking and choosing which studies we believe and which we do not (poronography causes problems - study good... child molestation doesn't cause problems - study bad) then what's the point of doing the studies at all? If we're not doing the studies for scientific purposes, then we're doing them to make us feel better about our pre-conceived notions. In that case, they're meaningless, pointless, and a waste of time and money. If we're doing them for scientific purposes, then the criteria I've laid out make sense. If our methodology and knowledge have not progress to the point where we can make accurate predictions about individuals, then let's do the next best thing. That is, let's perform lots of studies - good studies - and critique and study them until we're able to make reasonably accurate predictions on a large-scale statistical basis. That gives you trends and probabilities, which are far better than random guesses.

"Again, the people who have personal experience with the effects of pornography, either upon themselves or a loved one, have no need for studies. For them, there is no need for a scientific explanation of the profound change in personality which they, themselves have either experienced or witnessed."

And that's fine, but it's not science, and it's not something one can use to convince a person who's thinking objectively. Ok, someone's brother became addicted to porn and turned into a maniac. That's not evidence - for all we know, 100,000 others looked at the same kind and amount of porn and had no adverse effects. That suggests that some other problem was the true cause behind this individual turning into a maniac.

"Truth does not depend upon science for its validity."

Indeed - in fact, I think it's the other way around. Without truth, science has no meaning. Science can be called the search for truth. Do I want to know if pornography has adverse effects on people? Sure - but the only way I'm going to be convinced that it does is by scientific verification. Science is one of man's methods of finding truth. We know far more about our world than we did just a hundred years ago thanks to the rigorous persuit of science, following the scientific method. While it can never tell us about the meta-physical (God, outside the universe, etc), it can almost certainly tell us just about everything about the physical world. One of the primary goals of any scientific experiment done today is to isolate as many variables as possible until you have a situation that's easily testable. The problem with testing humans is that our lives provide for a nearly infinite and unpredictable array of variables which cannot be reliably isolated. This is the problem we face in psychology, and it's a problem whose only real solution is a new approach to scientific research. In the mean time, the best we can do is take lots rounded estimates and put them together to develop a basic model of what's happening, then draw conclusions from there.