YNOT EUROPE – It’s a time-honored tradition in the hallowed halls of academia: University students, particularly freshmen, make excellent research subjects. Often the studies for which student lab rats are sought are quick and painless; at other times, the research extends over a significant period of time, requires extra involvement from the subjects or includes an element that might be considered embarrassing. In the latter cases, researchers sometimes offer remuneration for participation.

Portugal’s University of Aveiro is putting a new spin on the university research model while scientists in its Laboratory Research Unit on Human Sexuality (or SexLab, for short) study erectile dysfunction. Not only are the students required to watch pornography — which most volunteers hardly would consider a hardship — but they’re also paid $40 for 90 minutes of their time.

Yep — the students, all between 18 and 40 years old, are paid to watch porn. Who could beat that deal?

The explicit material does serve an important function in the pioneering study, according to SexLab coordinator Pedro Nobre: While the subjects observe performers getting their freak on on-screen, clinicians measure their physical and psychological responses. Researchers hope to isolate links between erectile dysfunction and a man’s psychological state.

SexLab is a respected research facility, funded in part by Portugal’s Foundation for Science and Technology. Despite the titillation factor, the project is quite serious and the results may help change the lives of men who suffer from a little-understood syndrome, Nobre said.

“This work could have important implications both at the level of prevention and at the clinical level, if it can help to explain the psychological risk factors involved in the development of male sexual difficulties,” Nobre told Portuguese news broadcaster TVI.