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The experimental research Ferguson and Hartley mention are mainly varieties of showing a college student a video and asking them to answer a survey immediately after. I would not expect that this experimental design is able to detect the effects anti-porn activists are concerned with. Many of these college students likely regularly engage in porn, muddying the waters.
The studies on pornography showing positive effects on attitudes towards women explicitly exclude violent porn. "It is important to note that in the present paper, the focus of our literature review and research is on pornography represented by examples such as Playboy, sexually explicit but nonviolent videos, and adult movie channels." Garos, Beggan, Kluck, and Easton (2004) Are parents supporting these bills worried that their children might stumble on a Playboy magazine, or are they worried their kids are watching an 18 year old girl in a simulated gang rape?
They were studying such a different phenomena from what we are experiencing today.
Regarding the correlational studies, 98% of men in America have watched internet porn in the last six months. When there are so many people in one group, and so few people in the other group, correlational statistics get wonky. Looking at kids is the only way to get a large sample of people who haven't been exposed yet.
It also seems weird to blame the decrease in violent crime in the US on the proliferation of pornography, when there are so many other things to blame, like decreasing lead levels in childhood, increased abortion rates among impoverished groups, etc. I am not familiar with what happened in Denmark during this time, maybe they had a lead problem as well? But being able to cherry pick three other countries that match the correlation does not hold a huge amount of weight. One hypothesis that fits the evidence could be that we would see even less rape if pornography had not proliferated.
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