Just when I thought Academia couldn't sink any lower.

I agree with Sudocream on everything that the Manchester statement hasn't really addressed why his studentship was awarded. In the meantime Sage have retracted the article but two well known qualitative researchers, Victoria Clarke and Virginia Braun have gone on a 'Sage Strike' until there is more accountability around the original publication:

twitter.com/drvicclarke/status/1562863428976357376?s=21&t=j0YDEeC-32m_elNfP_xxCw

I don’t think Manchester came out of that looking at all good. There were some extremely damning comments from the MPs on that committee.

I do also think the university were dissembling a lot in relation to the questions of whether Manchester had anything to do with funding this research. It was published in February. He’d been a school funded PhD student at Manchester since the previous September. Almost certainly, they were paying him for the time he spent on some aspects of preparing the initial submission, responding to any reviewer comments and making changes. He will have been using their resources to access academic literature etc. He most certainly was using his Manchester email account for his correspondence relating to it.

I do think they’d have been better just admitting that, while the research activities described in the paper were not in any way associated with Manchester and the funding he received from Manchester was for a slightly different research project, he clearly was working on publishing the paper during the period in which he was being funded by Manchester. For that reason they just can’t unequivocally say that they had nothing at all to do with funding it.

It does also seem highly unlikely that the student never mentioned this - directly relevant to how he understands and approaches his doctoral research - previous research and the paper he’s written about it to his supervisor. It would be really weird not to. If you’ve got a student starting a PhD that is pretty much a direct continuation of their masters research (and this clearly is in obvious ways), you would have discussed the research he’s already done at some point. How could you possibly have avoided doing so? Even if the research had been terrible, you’d want to get them to reflect on their experiences of researching the topic already so that they can design a good PhD project.

i totally understand why the university is as keen to find as much distance from the wanking autoethnography as they can. But it doesn’t help if they are a bit cagey about quite the extent to which it will have been part of the bit they paid for.

Maybe, I can't help but think it's an example of why academia is in the shitter.

Hyper-specialized, to the point that it is likely irrelevant to anything that is actually real, and focused on sexual subculture I suspect mainly for reasons that are not just about intellectual curiosity.

And I'd be shocked if it isn't full of the assumptions and circular-referencing that seems to plague these kinds of socio-literary disciplines now.

And this was back in February Presumably, due to her specialism she would have understood what the content was from the title alone. I am glad she is being investigated too.

Will the transcript be on Hansard, Imnobody? I can't find it ...

hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-09-07#undefined

Kinsella's work (her book, Schoolgirls, Money and Rebellion in Japan) actually looks really interesting.

Good. The blatant arrogance of these so called intellectuals to produce and publish this filth under the guise of educational research is sickening.

The police have now started an investigation (DM link) and the House of Commons Education Committee have been grilling Manchester Uni's "vice-president for social responsibility". Apparently the PhD supervisor specialises in 'Lolita complex subcultures' and she's being investigated by the Uni as well as her student.
What a shitshow.

I suppose this is what "bring your whole self to work" really means. No filters, no boundaries, no laws, no child safeguarding. Anything goes.

Unbelievable that allegedly responsible adults can read this and think "OK - we'll publish it".

Fucking hell. How on earth did the reviewers accept this?

Chilling that yet another has been peer reviewed and signed off by senior academics. The bit that seems to be missing in these self absorbed writings is the actual/potential harm to the children. How the fuck does normalising paedophilia prevent child abuse?

A comment that makes so much sense in the context of FWR and MN despite the image of pram product reviews etc.

I just… I can’t fucking bear this any more.

Here's an article with more information:

reduxx.info/pedophile-publishes-auto-ethnography-about-sexual-attraction-to-young-boys-in-academic-journal/

More good work from Reduxx. Those women deserve a bloody medal.

It's by Brecht Vaerwaeter (pseudonym).

Jesus suffering Jehosophats, does nobody vet these bloody articles?!

Autoethnographists - sort it the fuck out!

Fucking hell there's another one:

journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/2/1/182

This time an academic paper aiming to have peadophilia accepted as a sexual orientation, which details the authors sexual interactions with children. In a journal edited by Oxford University. Why didn't the editors immediately send this submission to police? It's a written confession from a child abuser.

Our ethics review (at application, for discrete projects, for change of direction) is taken seriously and the published work wouldn't have got past it - that's with plenty of work in humanities, social sciences, cultural studies under review. Who knows what he suggested for his PhD, though how he'd have been accepted without ethics approval I don't understand. But ethics review isn't universal. I don't know if they do it in Germany.

Different here, thankfully. No one can force me to take a PhD student. I'll push back and say it'll cost more in wasted time, and lost opportunity to take on someone who'll contribute to our work.

I work in a uni that focuses on engineering so it's actually quite rare for ethics to be declined. I don't have much involvement in other areas where there's more likely to be ethical issues.

Not sure about anyone else but at ours there's a lot of pressure on academics to get PhD students. If they're willing to pay, there's little the supervisors can do to reject potential students. I warned them about a troublesome and argumentative MSc student but a junior academic ended up taking him on because he had to.

Oh yes, and are they paedophiles would be on that list of stuff I'd like to know, if that's not obvious.

If I was this guy's PhD supervisor, I'd be having kittens, but she seems to be silent so far. Am I the only one who Googles prospective students (and RAs)? Nowadays there's all sorts I'd want to know; not that I care about their politics (for example), but how they present their opinions in public IYSWIM.