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.

So he hasn't been named on social media etc

I suppose we are the ones who have to be careful.

wasn't James Lindsay banned from twitter for ...comments about paedophilia? There's also not enough info for me to see why he was banned.

He’s been named and his photo published on twitter.

Why would we have to be careful about naming this chap? We're discussing his published, peer-reviewed academic journal article and his Ph.D. research project. It's all in the public domain already.

He’s got his name and photo on his article on Researchgate. He’s not doing this under cloak and dagger! He’s proud of that article. I’m sure he is hoping to make his name for his innovative and creative participant observer research method!

Given the current state of academia, he could still prove right.

Gaspo I think the need to be careful arises when we discuss an individual. Not sure how to be careful talking about this erm event without pointing to the author though.

This is why I am puzzled

I put his name on Twitter and cannot find a single negative comment about him. The paper, yes.

i imagine everyone is wary of the legals.

This is his PhD Supervisor, whom he thanks in his paper:

www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/sharon.kinsella.html

'Sharon Kinsella has been focusing on the cultural language and political symbolism of both mass media and cultural production and subcultural forms and reactions in Japan since the early 1990s. Earlier work looked at cuteness and infantilism as rebellion; the educational and class factors behind the political and commercial transformation of manga for adults in the 1990s; otaku subculture and Lolita complex subcultures. Her first book Adult Manga (2000) is about the class sociology and politics of manga for adult readers between the 1960s and the new millenium.

Sharon’s second book, Schoolgirls, Money and Rebellion in Japan (2014) incorporates research on girls’ street styles and male journalism and in particula the media focus on kogyaru and ganguro street fashion and 'compensated dating' (or school girl prostitution) as one siginificant moment in the 'cult of girls' in the 1990s to the 2000s. Sharon's current research on otoko no ko ('boy daughters') and the rise of new modes of male to female cross-dressing within two-dimensioal kyara ('animation character') culture, and live amongst young men, examines a new phase in the cult of the girl, from 2006 to the present.'

DH (academic) says this is career ending. What he thinks has happened is that the university have taken him on as a PhD candidate but he hasn't had any funding for his 'research'. He's either lied about what he's doing or he's had no supervision. DH expects his PhD supervisor and the supervisor's boss to be in deep shit over this. The bloke himself will either be sacked, or if for some reason he can't be it'll only be a matter of time before they 'manage' him out. His career is over.

There is no way the university or ethics approved this.

The journal that published this will also be in the shit. This won't have gone to peer review as peers would have rejected it on ethical grounds. The editor has most likely approved this directly. This happens with smaller journals who don't always use peer review. The publishing house will go nuts once they find out. When similar things have happened in the past (although he says this is worse) the editor of the journal and sometimes the board have all been sacked.

Heads will roll once the right people know, and if they don't already know, they will soon. DH is currently writing to his contacts at Manchester university and the publishing house to make sure they know as he's absolutely furious. He's also reporting it to the police.

'Acknowledgements
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.'

'Author biography
Karl Andersson is a PhD student at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester (UK). He has a master’s degree in Visual and Media Anthropology from the Free University of Berlin (Germany). Karl’s graduation film about shota culture in Japan, Unreal Boys, won the award for Best Student Film at the Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival 2021 (USA). His PhD research is funded by the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures.'

Fladdermus, glad to hear your DH is reporting to the relevant authorities. Thank you.

Fladdermus that's interesting

I don't have knowledge of academia but I have a few media and publishing connections.

i can't work out whether people are turning up to work too stoned to see anything or if it's all just a big con. Like some reporters who have lauded highly problematic people and then claimed they knew nothing of the problems.

this seems similar. It looks like it didn't get passed by the uni but shouldn't they have commented by now?

the journal knew what they were publishing.

we might be crossing a rubicon, along with recent police visits for hurty feels for people who are...I thought...on the wrong side of the law.

his defence will be "cartoons".

It does seen unlikely he’s coming at this from a safeguarding angle
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyer_Magazine

Yes thanks @Fladdermus . I'm relieved to hear that this is not acceptable in the academic world. I never doubted it was but you never bloody know what new lows are possible!

Go DH!

In plain sight. Does no one do any due dliigence any more?

His supervisor is the author of this book:

www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GISRW9A/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1

Schoolgirls, Money and Rebellion in Japan

'Japanese society in the 1990s and 2000s produced a range of complicated material about sexualized schoolgirls, and few topics have caught the imagination of western observers so powerfully. While young Japanese girls had previously been portrayed as demure and obedient, in training to become the obedient wife and prudent mother, in recent years less than demure young women have become central to urban mythology and the content of culture. The cultic fascination with the figure of a deviant school girl, which has some of its earliest roots in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, likewise re-emerged and proliferated in fascinating and timely ways in the 1990s and 2000s.

Through exploring the history and politics underlying the cult of girls in contemporary Japanese media and culture, this book presents a striking picture of contemporary Japanese society from the 1990s to the start of the 2010s. At its core is an in-depth case study of the media delight and panic surrounding delinquent prostitute schoolgirls. Sharon Kinsella traces this social panic back to male anxieties relating to gender equality and female emancipation in Japan. In each chapter in turn, the book reveals the conflicted, nostalgic, pornographic, and at times distinctly racialized manner, in which largely male sentiments about this transformation of gender relations have been expressed. The book simultaneously explores the stylistic and flamboyant manner in which young women have reacted to the weight of an obsessive and accusatory male media gaze.

Covering the often controversial subjects of compensated dating (enjo kôsai), the role of porn and lifestyle magazines, the historical sources and politicized social meanings of the schoolgirl, and the racialization of fashionable girls, Schoolgirls, Money, Rebellion in Japan will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, sociology, anthropology, gender and women's studies.'

I recently had a paper (in which I nailed my GC colours to the mast, incidentally) rejected by an education journal. Not saying it should‘be been accepted but this story makes me even more bloody outraged that it wasn’t!!

Sadly I don’t necessarily think this will be career-ending for him as I’ve worked with people who’ve had papers published which have very obviously been an excuse to legitimise their own fetishes (though admittedly none quite this awful). I very much hope what @Fladdermus says is right, though, and am glad he’s been reported.

I reckon posters on here could provide numerous examples where individuals and institutions repeatedly fail to exercise due diligence and advocate for individuals with reprehensible behaviour and who should be nowhere near children / young people.
Although this does seem to be a particular low amidst a grim selection.

The Chair of the university's ethics committee should be hauled over the coals for this, as well as the student's supervisor. It's really shocking, as it is so blatant.

Jfc

What in the holy fuck?!

How can this not be career ending? I know some universities study weird stuff, but unless I missed it no one has a professorship of wanking?

I think "there was a risk of his research being used in criminal evidence against him" is a diplomatic understatment. Does it not form a full confession? I have not read it myself because I don't want to subject myself to it, but others have reported it goes into great detail. What images he was looking at, the exact moment he ejaculated, what he was thinking, all in fine detail, many many records of. I doubt any police force in any country has ever had as detailed a child porn confession as that PhD.
Where he mentions other research subjects, surely they are in very serious legal peril too? If he has their details, communications, reports of their masturbation to similar material this might constitute a paedophile ring working together.
Where have all the indecent images come from? Has he brought them from Japan? If yes isn't he importing child porn internationally? If he imported it for the purpose of others maturbating to it, then I would imagine he's so far up shit creek without a paddle that he's now an explorer of hithertoo uncharted territories.
This could also be a very easy win for a police force that has a very battered reputation of late. A search warrant or two, a copy of the PhD and research notes, and they've closed the case. The guy even says he masturbated at home, so it's not like they have to look far for corroborating evidence.
I don't see how this could be any easier for the police?

Thank your Dh @Fladdermus please from us 🙏

Will do. The Manchester police website crashed but he's resubmitting his report as I type.