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.

[MoltenLasagne]

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

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

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".

[BattyOrange]

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.

[mrshoho]

@BattyOrange

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.

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

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

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

[Imnobody4]

Apparently Kinsella was informed that the paper had been accepted for publication and said 'go ahead'. She did not blow the whistle or tell him to withdraw it.
Link to the committee hearing -it's the first item.
parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/d17426b1-8c34-42db-b965-58f0b09de11b#share

[ArabellaScott]

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

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

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

@Imnobody4

Apparently Kinsella was informed that the paper had been accepted for publication and said 'go ahead'. She did not blow the whistle or tell him to withdraw it.
Link to the committee hearing -it's the first item.
parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/d17426b1-8c34-42db-b965-58f0b09de11b#share

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.

[MangyInseam]

@YetAnotherSpartacus

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

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.

[SudocremOnEverything]

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.

[Imnobody4]

The second part of the session was on Fof Speech. I was 'amused' to see that right at the beginning of the first session the chair was interrupted by an official and told to read out a Trigger Warning including advice to contact the NSPCC. Later on this was pointed out to him by the academics when he questioned the use of TWs - well all this is quite normal -you did it yourself.
Hope the official is taken to task.


Arabella -it will all be in Hansard, I'm not sure how long it takes.

[nettie434]

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