From reading one of Dr. Paul Federoff’s papers, I never really got the impression he was treating pedophilia, rather he was treating POCD, which can very similar to someone with an untrained eye. POCD is a condition where someone obsesses over the thought they might be a pedophile.
For instance, he spoke a lot about he taught individuals to distance themselves from thinking of themselves as pedophiles. And he also mentioned how he didn’t want them obsess over specific fleeting thoughts. One patient described how he simply lets fleeting thoughts come and go now.
I don’t know if Dr. Federoff is necessarily a bad scientist but he does have a tendency of over-generalizing his grandiose claims to people of whom it does not apply to. And there should be far safer and less risky ways of treating POCD than with his methods. He enters the territory of conversion therapy which would be harmful in any case.
You would have to be very careful not to do it on the wrong person because if you repress your sexuality it almost certainly will erupt out later in uncontrollable form. The idea is to eliminate OCD thought processes, not to eliminate sexual thoughts simply because they may exist.
One characterising feature may be that POCD individuals have no actual physical or romantic attraction to children so that is a diagnosing factor. Making sure self-esteem is proper and hormones are properly aligned as in my thread Negative Biological Factors may be important because any negative biological factor is going to complicate any diagnosis.
Some of this fear and terror that you might be a pedophile might even come from societal stigma and may end up feeding into an OCD feedback loop.
I don’t know much about POCD honestly, there may be others who do.