Academic Who Hoaxed Grievance Study Journals Could Lose His Job

Hotair.com ^ | 1-9-19 | John Sexton

[DeweyCA]

Last October I wrote about the trio of academics, Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, who submitted bogus papers to supposedly serious journals and discovered that a number of them were not only accepted but praised. Now one of the professors who engaged in that attempt to point out the deficiencies in contemporary scholarship fears he is in danger of losing his job. Peter Boghossian, an associate professor of philosophy at Portland State University, says the university is considering accusing him of “fabricating data” in the papers which were so obviously absurd they bordered on satire. From Fox News:

Four days before Christmas, Portland State University Vice President Mark McLellan emailed Boghossian that he had been found guilty of “a clear violation of the policies of your employer” for hoaxing the journals without first seeking permission from an “Institutional Review Board”.

Institutional Review Board rules mandate “informed consent” from “human subjects” – in this case, the fooled journal editors – meaning the university would have required him to get consent from the journals in advance of sending the hoax papers. Boghossian notes that would have defeated the whole point.

Boghossian says the university has assigned him extra training as a punishment – but that a more serious punishment, to be determined by the university’s President and Provost, will also be announced soon, that may include his termination…

The university is currently deliberating about finding Boghossian guilty on an additional charge of “fabricating data”. Boghossian’s published hoax paper about “rape culture and queer performativity” in dog parks extravagantly claimed to have examined 10,000 dogs’ genitals and then surveyed their owners about their sexual orientations.

Boghossian and his co-authors say the claim to have such data was “clearly preposterous” and that the whole point was to see if the journal editors would pick up on the absurdity.

It seems pretty clear what is happening here. Entire fields of feminist and gender studies (what the academics call grievance studies) have been embarrassed by this experiment and the people who look like frauds for praising rewritten versions of Mein Kampf (just one example of a paper that was accepted for publication) are looking to lash out at those who embarrassed them.

And it’s not just the publication of the papers that started this. Last year Boghossian invited James Damore to speak on campus. That event was interrupted when someone cut the microphones to silence the speakers. Not long after that, all three of these academics hosted a talk on campus titled “Is Intersectionality a Religion?” They concluded that it was a kind of religion. Part of the irony of the reaction to them is that all three professors are liberal atheists. They aren’t remotely on the right themselves, they’re simply critical of the far left. That’s enough to make them enemies in modern academic settings.

Last November, a group of a dozen PSU professors contributed an anonymous hit piece to the student paper in which they claimed Boghossian’s efforts had damaged the value of a PSU degree. Though they wouldn’t put their names on the attack, they clearly wanted to see him punished or fired. “It is utterly incredible to me what the university has become,” Boghossian said at the time. Here’s a video made the day the article was published:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG3QYbDeZso

In case you’ve forgotten what the fake journal papers were about, here’s a video summary of the trio’s efforts. I strongly suspect one of the things motivating this backlash is how much joy these three took in mocking the grievance studies journals and their idea of academic rigor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVk9a5Jcd1k

[DeweyCA]

These three liberal atheist professors actually cared enough about academic scholarship to want to try to expose the phoniness of the "grievance studies" journals. And now a tenured prof may get fired because he cared and dared to oppose academic sloppiness and propaganda. Intersectionality is the Left's new religion and anyone who opposes it is a heretic and must be eliminated. I imagine that the next logical step, after firing them, is to burn the heretics' books.

[fhayek]

You need permission to perpetrate a hoax? Kind of defeats the whole purpose, doesn’t it?

[ProtectOurFreedom]

...Boghossian’s efforts had damaged the value of a PSU degree.

Universities across the land were doing a fine job of that long before Prof. Boghossian hoaxed the journals.

[Grimmy]

They were testing the process of studies.

the Luddites trying to fire them are antiscience.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Behead anyone who points out that the King has no clothes!

[Leaning Right]

Portland State University has decided to revive an ancient practice: Kill the messenger.

[sciencewriter86]

As I sit here at home busily observing academia from afar, I laugh at what the left is doing to scholarship, publishing or perishing, and see the antics of leftist faculty and administration destroying themselves, their students, the taxpayers, and the people who are really serious about supporting our old and traditional culture and learning.

My daughter is a leftist feminist who teaches in a private university on the West coast. She tells me that the enrollment goes down every year, the administrators are itching to cut faculty and staff salaries—and are seriously working to increase their own. I remain silent because I’m a common sense conservative. As such my comment on academia and its rot are not welcome.

In the old days, when traditional morals, ethics, and true scientific inquiry and results were products of academia, the whole nation, and indeed, whole world prospered.

Now traditionalists in post secondary education are scoffed at, fired, and in certain incidents, physicalley attacked. All the while, the leftists are tearing their institutions, reputations, and fields apart. They are fouling their nests and in a sane America, are destroying what the Asians call their Iron Rice Bowl.

We are in a true Renaiisance, and the academic world will not survive on the dumpster diving of Cultural Marxism, hatred of white males, and the capitalist society which supports them.

I applaud every trade school student and graduate. It is they, not the peer group with letters after their names that will Make America Great Again.

[Falconspeed]

"A tenured prof may get fired." Sad but true. The American education system is floating in money and the administrators and professors are not capable of reform. What is the cause? Vanity and pride.

What is the solution? Humility, deep grief and the deletion of government subsidies.

The proud workers in the American education system choose to break the Ten Commandments, especially #8 about stealing the incomes of patriotic workers. The proud workers in the American education system reject the chances to grieve the loss of student innocence and admit their mistakes. The three professors who published silly essays have permanently exposed the useless journals. Getting fired will not damage their fine work.

[Flick Lives]

It’s not so much that the professors have exposed the travesty that is peer review. it’s that the publication of these hoax papers threatens the fat gravy train of academia by exposing the whole operation as a fraud.

[MeganC]

“...claimed to have examined 10,000 dogs’ genitals and then surveyed their owners about their sexual orientations. Boghossian and his co-authors say the claim to have such data was “clearly preposterous”

Apparently in Oregon the thought of checking out 10,000 dog dicks isn’t all that preposterous. It’s probably even arousing to some of the freaks in that sin-sick state.

[an amused spectator]

I’m going to start openly insulting people who are currently getting college degrees.

[madprof98]

My daughter finishes her degree at Intersectionality U. this semester. Then it’s off to trade school to learn to do something worthwhile in life.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Last October I wrote about the trio of academics, Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, who submitted bogus papers to supposedly serious journals and discovered that a number of them were not only accepted but praised...ironic - many academic research papers, particularly in the social sciences, are based in part on subterfuge and hoaxes - psychological research in which the experimenter has an accomplice who maybe seems to get severe but fake shocks, for example - in fact this was such an experiment, with the "bogus papers" serving as the independent variable, and the idiotic responses from the supposedly reputable journals as the dependent variables - actually a quite creditable project.....

[coloradan]

Journal editors are not “human subjects” for whom informed consent would be necessary except under a very tortured interpretation. Instead, journal editors are supposed to be the gatekeepers of their journals, ready to reject bogus papers whether they are honestly mistaken, the product of crackpots, mischievous, or just plain wrong.

[rlmorel]

Right.

These people did this to point that out. Who could fault them if they found the success of it completely hilarious and a point of ridicule to these frauds in not only the Grievance Study journals, but nearly all journals.

They likely get paid money to “peer review” these types of articles. People are under pressure to publish articles.

It’s like a self-licking ice cream cone. They get these things to review, and pass them on for publication, probably reviewing them by paging through them in about 30 seconds while having lunch or between surfing the Internet just to obtain the money they probably get for doing it.

And the people getting their stuff reviewed get published, and it goes on their resumes and in their departmental requirements for publishing so they check that off.

And attributing it to being simply an organized way of gun decking requirements in an educational environment is being charitable. Because if you read some of those fake studies as I did (and emailed them to my friends after snickering at them) it was either lazy greed or unfathomable idiocy on the part of the reviewers.

There is no middle ground.

However I do not discount the idiocy mindset, either.

Some years ago, a conservative friend went with me into Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA, one of the localities on par with Ithaca, Madison, and Berkeley with respect to Leftist Lunacy.

We went to an Au Bon Pain with was famous for its outdoor setting in Harvard Square and tables of chess games going on. There was a poetry slam going on, and we got our coffee and sat down to watch.

There was a young girl wearing a beret (really) and she was reciting a poem. I can’t remember the exact words, but there was a line like:

“And then he bent me over a chair and f****d me up the ***, and...”

As I turned to look at my friend in amazement, my eyes caught a guy stroking his goatee as he listened with narrowed eyes, and the look on his face was unmistakably “Wow. Deep. Deep, man...”

My friend and I both saw it and began laughing aloud, nearly unable to compose ourselves as we walked away...all these years later, we still laugh when we remember it! So, yeah...the fact that these lunatics really think their own excrement is ice cream is stunning, yet true.

[rlmorel]

If there is one thing that drives Leftists stark raving mad at the drop of a hat, is is genuine, well aimed, sturdily constructed and hilarious ridicule.

They simply cannot take it, which is why, to paraphrase Rhett Butler...

A CONSERVATIVE RHETT BUTLER: "No, I don’t think I will ridicule you, although you need ridiculing, badly. That’s what’s wrong with you. You should be ridiculed and often, and by someone who knows how."

That "someone who knows how" would be us...:)

[dsc]

“I’m going to start openly insulting people who are currently getting college degrees.”

My middle son is working for a degree in accounting. He plans to work as an accountant.

If you insult him, he may taunt you, possibly even a second time.

My youngest boy went to the Marine recruiting office the day after he graduated from high school, and is now a Marine. Unlike his old man, he’s going into a field that has value in civilian life.

There’s not a lot of call for people who are good at dropping ASROCs on submarines.

[Fla.Deporable]

“COULD” lose his job? Wow.