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

Indeed.

Even within academic disciplines, the behavioural economists don’t really give a fuck what the development economists are doing. The economic geographers don’t give a shit what the cultural geographers are doing (and mostly think it’s bollocks). The developmental psychologists aren’t interested in what the personality psychologists are up to. The various subdomains within developmental psychology or cultural geography or behavioural economics mostly manage to ignore what the others are doing or think they’re all idiots who don’t know their arse from their elbow.

There’s so much academic material out there that almost everyone is not even looking at any of it. Because no one reads actual editions of journals any more, they probably aren’t even seeing all the stuff that doesn’t come up on their searches or side bar on the stuff they do read.

That’s part of how a paper like that not only gets published (the same 10 people in the tiny sub field review each other’s work repeatedly) but how it fails to come to people’s attention immediately.

I've been thinking the same thing - qualitative research isn't a discipline and doesn't have a community. It's the kind of journal where you might try to place a slightly oddball paper with an untested methodology. I can't think of anyone who'd read it cover to cover - you'd follow relevant citations to it. Doubt many read this man's work - hope not.

I’m not sure there is a ‘qualitative research community’. It’s extremely fragmented and silo-y. Tiny sub fields where everyone reads and reviews each others’ work and it’s all
mutually reinforcing.

Of course, that is a big part of the problem really.

This guy has been around doing research into shota users for quite some time. And he’s hardly been hiding his personal interest and affinity with this ‘community’. The acceptance he had so far had obviously led him to become confident to think that article would be acceptable to the academic qualitative research community. And let’s face it, he was very nearly right. He would have got away for it if it weren’t for those pesky kids ( Tory MPs and GC feminist it appears). But from what I have read, it does not appear to be the qualitative research community who called this out. They have been endorsing this.

It’s reasonably common for ethics committees to reject projects at the first attempt. The ethics review process should improve the research.

But I suspect this one was horrific and beyond improvement.

I'm quite relieved to see that Manchester had no involvement with his thesis. I do wonder what he proposed for his PhD that made their ethics committee say no.

Self immersive research

Quite. You can see the author pausing at their keyboard as they considered how to word that!

Seriously, that is a good response from Manchester Uni. They refer to wider concerns about the student, looking at reviewing wider processes themselves including to doing background checks on students. Refer to police involvement.

A much, much better response than Qualitative Research Journal managed. All they did was throw the peer reviewers under a bus. You would have thought that for a discipline so keen on self- reflection, they could have done a bit more self reflection in n how their culture enabled this.

Now, have Queer Studies scholars been publicly making any self reflective statements? They have birthed all this, after all!

There is contradictory information regarding when the period of self-immersive research activity took place.

'Self-immersive research activity' - there's a euphemism if I ever heard one!

Here's an idea ban all autoethnographic research/studies and insist that any research/studies have real world applications and they are done to the highest possible standards and aren't allowed to quote/reference other poor quality papers to back up claims/results as has become common in gender studies

'this case has highlighted that we must ensure that our PhD student recruitment processes are sufficiently robust to appropriately scrutinise the legal, ethical and safeguarding issues of the proposed research'

No shit. Here's a tip - check out what anybody is up to when they say they are doing 'Queer Studies'/Autoethnography.

Greater Manchester Police has opened an investigation. We are assisting them with their enquiries to establish what, if any offences, have been committed in the UK or elsewhere

Good.

‘Greater Manchester Police has opened an investigation’. Good

Student suspended. Good

Manchester uni have issued a statement:

www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/statement-on-investigation-into-work-of-phd-student/

Yeah. Not buying it. There are still serious concerns about the culture in qualitative research in academia (and wider). Two peer reviewers saw nothing wrong with this, presumably the editor and no-one in the publication process did either (surely someone other than the peer reviewers were aware of the content of this piece ) and nor, apparently, did anyone in the research community who read that article in the months it was published.

Trying to pretend this was just a failure of two numpty peer reviewers is unconvincing.

The culture that led to this article being deemed suitable for publication is what needs investigating and addressing, not the process.

I can't find the article I read but this American law article confirms it (last line of the section 'What is Lolicon')

www.robertmhelfend.com/criminal-defense/sex-crimes/lolicon-illegal/#:~:text=Noting%20the%20connection%20to%20sex,do%20not%20depict%20actual%20children.

Ugh I didn't know that. Do you have a link?

From what I've read his get out of jail card is the fact that he did it in Germany. Appantly cartoon drawings of child abuse are not illegal there.

The proper response was not 'ooh, sorry we upset some of you', it should have been 'this has been passed to the police'.

moral offense? problematic? It's fucking illegal!

Imagine that interview...

'Can you tell us about a time when you made a mistake at work, what was the mistake and how did you handle the fall out?'

Erm, well I got my lady dique out and'

'Enough - you're hired!'

The two peer reviewers who considered the note did not raise ethical concerns in relation to the method and material in their reviews.

So, who were the reviewers, and what possible reason could they have for not raising any ethical concerns in their reviews? Perhaps their hard drives need checking as well…

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14687941221122713

Ah there is an update. The retraction notice has been published on the journal's website.

The bolded bit is important - seems Manchester were completely unaware of this publication. I imagine he'll be in serious trouble for linking it to their university without approval.

---------

Having reviewed editorial and peer review processes in relation to this note, the Journal Editors have concluded that there was a lack of clarity and hence ethical scrutiny at the time of the initial submission. This was particularly so in relation to institutional location and position, and ethical review of the work. While the Journal has systems in place to flag ethical concerns raised by article submissions prior to review, those same systems do not fully extend to note submissions. The two peer reviewers who considered the note did not raise ethical concerns in relation to the method and material in their reviews.

The author has now explained that the work described in this note was carried out as a piece of independent research in Germany, without institutional ethical oversight. The author stated that they followed professional ethical guidelines for their discipline, including the primary injunction to ‘do no harm’. The Editorial Team notes that such principles also refer to the need for the thoughtful consideration of potential unintended consequences of research, and the need to weigh competing ethical obligations.

The Editors are mindful of arguments that moral offense generated by the publication of the note provides problematic grounds for the censoring of scholarship. However, the Editorial Team recognises the argument that the note legitimizes sexual activity involving sexually graphic illustrated images of children and young people, both as an activity in itself and as a research method. Such arguments make the note highly problematic due to the potential to cause significant harm.

The Journal Editors believe ethical conduct and oversight in relation to research, method, methodology and publication is not a single event, but an ongoing process with shared and overlapping responsibilities between the author, the academic institution(s), the journal, and the publisher. On reflection, due to the potential for significant harm caused by the publication of this work compounded by ethical issues surrounding the conception and design, the Journal Editors have made the decision to retract and remove the note.
The Journal Editors and the Publisher sincerely apologise to readers who were negatively impacted by the publication of this work.

That Andrea Cachia twitter account only seems to tweet a link (automatically? twice a day) to a go fund me page that is no longer accepting payments.