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

[Imnobody4]

Not just a PhD in wanking, but a peer-reviewed paper on masturbating to images of young boys. Published in "Qualitative Methods". t.co/L3MnSkYQFN

twitter.com/ProfAliceS/status/1556584749447143425?t=v_5NNIZDXKNzFbMBZxWsfQ&s=19

How did this get past Manchester University's ethics process @OfficialUoM ? Masturbating to images of children and writing it up for public consumption does not seem ethical to me. This is hugely disturbing.

Actually I'm speechless.

Their UCU (it would be wouldn't it ) rep has almost certainly advised them to keep their mouths shut.

For example, this is a synopsis of her recent book. Trying to understand more about the context and consequences of this phenomenon isn't necessarily problematic @PrimAndProperViperish

www.waterstones.com/book/schoolgirls-money-and-rebellion-in-japan/sharon-kinsella/9780415704113

'I would be wary of assuming she shares Anderssons thoughts or that she knew the details of this "research"'

You would be weary of assuming his research supervisor knew what he's researching?

I suppose I don’t really like her use of the term ‘school girl prostitutes’. I agree with one of the social workers who was trying to get action taken in the grooming scandals (by predominantly Muslim men) and was being told by other professionals that the girls were prostitutes. She said, ‘ there are no child prostitutes, what there are are children who are being abused.’

the supervisor is pretty well regarded in the field. I’d hope she’s taken some union advice over this.

it looks like the publishers have told the editors to take it down. They originally left it up and added this correction. Which really wasn’t sufficient. I’d imagine the continued stream of complaints was not going down well with the publisher.

It really depends what he tells her. I’d imagine he hadn’t shared his wanking diaries in supervision meetings, not least as it probably constitutes sexual harassment (and adult women are what he’s interested in harassing).

She may have had limited power to refuse taking him on as a student too. I certainly wouldn’t assume the process was entirely fair or transparent - and pressure free. Not in contemporary HE.

Have you read the full thread, or any of the commentary online?

This research was done before he was a PhD student at Manchester & Kinsella isn't listed as an author. If it was published in May it's likely he submitted it 6 months to a year in advance of this. Another academic is specifically thanked in the acknowledgements for commenting on drafts, Kinsella isn't.

When I was a PhD student my supervisor did not have the motivation or time to be involved with any of my publications I'd worked on in previous posts, that she specifically wasn't an author on.

This is why I say I'd be wary of assuming anything. Maybe she did know, maybe she didn't. The FOI requests sent to Manchester will be revealing.

That's a term used in the Waterstones synopsis (not written by her), and it's in the context of understanding the "media delight and panic" around this. Whether they mean literal schoolgirls, or the trends around this, I don't know.

Without reading the book and her other publications, you cannot make the assumption that she's saying that children who are sexually abused are "prostitutes". If there is evidence of her sayign this then yes of course it's unacceptable.

To be clear, I have no idea if Kinsella was involved or if you dig into her research it's problematic.

But there's a lot of assuming going on with no evidence, and that does has the potential to be career and life wrecking, even if in retrospect the allegations were false.

Here's a link to the FOI request I mentioned: www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/karl_andersson

My God! I’ve just realized this means that even when the deeply unethical nature of this article was pointed out, they STILL thought it was suitable to be included in their journal. This really is a culture, not a process issue!

I hope both the individual concerned and their supervisor are preparing for a visit from the police. It defies belief that a responsible adult could look at this paedophile promoting "research" and not be raising red flags.
The police are very speedy to announce their visits to ribboners, stickerists and stroppy women speaking out. Hopefully they'll be as quick to respond to the open promotion of paedophilia as appears to have happened here.

I have assumed nothing. Merely stated facts.

No not quite. Normally editors would slap an expression of concern over a paper, and then retract it (whilst leaving it online). Leaving it up doesn't mean they think it's still "suitable to be included", it's just a way of being transparent which is important in research.

I think that because in this case it's actually something illegal, they've decided it was better to go against standard protocol and actually remove it.

Kinsella is thanked in the paper.

I suspect they followed the usual process and then the publisher said it had to be pulled entirely.

that’s customary. It doesn’t say anything that suggests she helped with the paper specifically. What it does say sounds like she’s been generally encouraging. But we have no idea what she’s been encouraging about.

PhD students in the humanities are pretty autonomous. A supervisor will only know what the student is sharing with them. She might have had no idea at all about this.

Yup, as I said, another academic is specifically thanked for commenting on drafts. Kinsella is thanked for "always encouraging me to go where my research takes me", which could mean anything.

This two statements do suggest she wasn't involved in the paper, and it's standard practise to provide thanks to your primary PhD supervisor as technically your funding comes through them (and they lose out by you working on other projects).

'I would like to thank Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen for commenting on an early version of this article, the two anonymous reviewers for providing useful feedback, and my PhD supervisor Sharon Kinsella for always encouraging me to go where my research takes me.'

Again, I'm making no assumptions. Just the facts.

Speaking from experience as a reviewer, thanking "two anonymous reviewers for providing useful feedback" doesn't mean that

• the author has accepted your advice


• the editor has rejected/indicated that the author should revise the paper in line with your recommendations.

I think my point is that it should have been blindly obvious that this article was far from ‘business as usual’. This wasn’t a case of someone who had manipulated data, or plagerised or whatever. This was a case of a man masturbating to sexual images of young children! By treating it in the same way as someone who is suspected of conducting/ writing poor research or cheating to progress their career, they are still treating it as a normal part of the range of bad to good research practice . And it’s not. It’s something else entirely. And they STILL could not see that.

So earlier on in the thread there was mention of queer theory corrupting culture and moral compasses so that people can’t see article’s like Karl’s for the immoral paedophilia legitimizing crap it is. So I just looked up the reviewer, Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen, thanked for commenting on an earlier version of the paper. She’s a gender studies professor with she/her they/them pronouns.

both Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen and Sharon Kinsella seem to work in 'gender' and 'queer' studies.

www.gender.lu.se/nordiqueer-nordic-queer-revolution

Kinsella's work involves obviously a lot of 'gender' related issues. Her latest work is about cross-dressing in Japan - a film called Josō (2020):

twitter.com/james_welker/status/1462735368986324995

I'm sure this is all potentially legitimate research work. But it certainly does provide good cover for the wanking Phd chap.

I think it's a bigger problem though and they are related.

I have a relative doing Phd work. It's what's considered a professional subject, basically related to management. He's very keen that after it's done he'll be Dr Smith. Not in an asshole way, really but I have a hard time taking it seriously. He's a nice guy and quite good in his technical area, but the idea that he would have a doctorate is just ridiculous to me. He's less educated in a general sense than my grandmother who left school at 15.

Maybe I am a snob, but I don't think so, I have a lot of respect for technical education and think we need to do it better, as it deserves to be treated as a respectable and important kind of knowledge. But the masters level degrees they are handing out like candy is not the way to go about it, nor doctorates of the same kind.

Have been following this closely - so far no word from either the journal or the university about the results of investigations into Karl Andersson.

I hope it's being taken seriously and they aren't hoping people will forget about it.

Surely a police investigation is ongoing?