Corpus 2

[TokyoBouncyBall]

A summary would be good and I might do one later but Aston, data scraping, astonishing lack of contrition…

That's a very good point. It discredits her entire thesis because the rules now allow us to be more specific and direct than they did a year ago, let alone 15 years! What a waste of a research opportunity.

I read that PhD and was shocked at how there were only (and this is from memory so don't quote me) 6 cases used. One more or less had her police interview published in full and that was the one that made the newspapers as it went to court. All were from one force. So it would have been so incredibly easy for the poor women whose interviews were used to be identified in real life. I was horrified reading it.

I probably agreed in the midst of a complete breakdown to all sorts regarding what was done with my police interview and video interview. I'd have been broken to discover that dissected and poured over in a Fucking PhD about how rape victims are treated.

Reading more about this, I am not sure why this PhD proposal was approved with this team of supervisors, even if the fundamental issues with the perspective didn’t exist (which of course they do).

I admit to having snorted when I saw that the evidence for linguistic transphobia was a Vice article.

I would be interested to see the minutes of the ethics committee meeting that approved this application. What questions were asked? What changes (if any) were requested?

How did this get past so many people without anyone pulling it up?

I wouldn’t accept this level of ethical consideration from my undergraduate students, let alone a PhD student or their supervisors. The PhD student should probably know better by this point. The academics should definitely know better, and the fact that they didn’t, and seemingly nor did anyone on the research ethics committee, suggests some serious endemic issues in the department, and even the faculty.

I'd have been broken to discover that dissected and poured over in a Fucking PhD about how rape victims are treated.

Same here.

Perhaps this might give the linguists and IT bods at Aston (including Eden) an idea of how upsetting it is for personally identifying information to get out as part of an investigation/research 🤔

Posts and comments consistently must discuss transgender people or transgenderism. The thread will be removed if it significantly diverges from this topic

Surely that only leaves about two FWR threads, as all the others significantly diverge into recipes and/or discussions over how horrifc hot weetabix is.

well, to be fair, some things do need to be said

As long as it's not lemon drizzle I'm good.

Well someone somewhere is reading something @ArabellaScott as Eden's phone number has gone off the HTML version of the document. They've also redacted her deep concern for her own mental health in conducting the research, but hey, that's archived on here for good now.

I think we've also, from the implied support of her supervisor for this terrible, terrible stress, got a pretty clear view of how much Nikki MacLeod (?) is onboard with the general tenor of the research.

Don't disagree with what anyone has said about Aston's reputation, but it's worth noting that this has happened for a reason, which is that it is a shoddy institution with poor governance and without even a basic understanding of ethics.

Crikey, Cranky, thanks!

I quite fancy a Doctorate of Hagitude and Fuckery if that's available.

good to hear.

I trust Aston University has also reported itself to the relevant body over that data breach of Edens personal data.

I've taken the liberty of assuming you are a viper.

Mainly so that I could collect the scroll thing and wear the hat.

You're welcome!

The certificate will be hanging in my hall if you ever wish to see it! Admittedly I've had to tippex out your name to put mine in but other than that it looks great!

You can tell we’re all mums on here - telling the student off and looking out for her at the same time. And not getting paid for sorting the business mess out. C’est la vie.

I’ve been on a bit of a rabbit hole of reading and just read the transcript of a podcast where Nicci claims to do online ethnography.

One of the most basic fundamentals tenets of online ethnographies is that you don’t come to ‘study’ a community and try and impose your outside or preconceived notions about them.

It is also a fairly basic ethical fundamental of any sort of linguistic (and I assume other fields?) research online that just because a website is not password protected, it does not mean that it is an open space for research - there can still be a reasonable expectation for privacy.

Furthermore, the fact that informed consent would be ‘difficult’ to obtain is not a good reason to not obtain it. It would be much easier to do non ethical research!! But of course we don’t because that goes against any level of morals and decency.

Ugh this whole thing is really fucking aggravating on so many different levels for me. It is so unethical. It is bringing a discipline I have deep love for (not forensic linguistics, but linguistics more generally) into disrepute. And most of all, it is clearly doing harm - and that is one of the most basic things we promise not to do when we decide to be academics.

My second comment on this.

Leaving aside Weetabix, this seems to confirm my suspicions that when shouty posters on threads started to bully other people, got posts removed, once or twice even got threads closed, because there were digressions into cheese and cake and suchlike related discussions, that was because the machines couldn't cope with human behavior, and the monitors working on behalf of Aston or similar institutions had to prevent that.

Sort of the reverse of those 'prove you are human' captcha things for entering some sites. We had to act as though we were not human in order to facilitate non-legal mechanical scrutiny. It really stinks.

If linguistics as a discipline has any ethics, (I'm not convinced, it seems designed to add a new layer of surveillance and control to a totalitarian state system) it needs to demonstrate some collective standards.

@ArabellaScott see you can't even tell I've doctored it!!!!

At least going forward in your department Aston University and their dodgy understanding of ethical and moral decency can be held up a shining example of what NOT TO DO!

I wonder if Aston University has any idea how long a load of pissed off women can hold a grudge for?

So long that we should probably have a data stewardship policy associated with it

I'm looking forward to one of next year's PhD thesis being titled "How Aston University Fucked Up. A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of how a PhD corpus-assisted discourse analysis of Mumsnet thesis greatly upset users of Mumsnet"

Now that one I could get behind! 💜

.

Yeah, I don't. No response to my polite email letting them know they'd doxxed one of their students. I am entirely unsurprised.

I missed seeing the un-redacted document but well done everyone for sorting out Aston's incompetency.
There were 3 supervisors listed weren't there - I can't find their names? Were they all from Aston? Why are the names of supervisors deemed to be confidential? Are they not wanting to be associated with the work they are supervising?

Most definitely. It’s also making me side-eye a colleague who has worked with this bunch previously, although not for several years.

I don’t know whether to try and find out more from her about her experiences or whether it will just make me lose any respect I’ve got for her.