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.

The publishers have added a note about the paper online.

It is likely the work is from his previous studies. However, the paper is very clearly linked with them because he is currently a PhD student there and his author biography makes this clear. He’s been a registered student at Manchester for just under a year.

Yes - not debating this at all.

Just pointing out that Manchester may have been totally unaware the work had happened & been published.

I noticed he acknowledged another academic from LSE for commenting on drafts, but just gave thanks to "...PhD supervisor Sharon Kinsella for always encouraging me to go where my research takes me", which could mean anything.

I get news alert emails from The Times.

’“Wanking is not a research method,” says professor, as PhD candidate chronicles how he “enjoyed” cartoon images of boys’

well there’s a header and a half!

To be clear, when I talk about nothing happening to the researcher, I don't mean in relation to uni sanctions.

My opinion of academia was pretty low before this, but now, I hope it can't go any lower. I don't know how much taxpayer funding they get but for most humanities, it should be zilch, though science is now sadly questionable too.

I have a family member who is an academic and I am constantly amazed that there's a good salary attached to the pointless shit they do, and funding available for "no shit, Sherlock" studies. Fine if privately funded but this isn't stuff most people want to pay for.

I suspect that Manchester will be asking Sharon Kinsella some very pointed questions about what she’d seen of this and what she was encouraging him to do.

Tbh, of one of her first year PhD students is publishing an article on the broad topic you’re supervising them on - you’d expect it to have come up in supervision meetings at some point.

It’s one of those areas where the better answer of probably a lack of competence (her having dropped the ball a bit with this student and not realised what he was up to) rather than a lack of judgement in relation to supporting this stuff.

PhD students can be a bloody nightmare - especially the arrogant ones who think they know much better than you (and would be likely to even want to write about wanking). But presumably she must have realised she had a difficult loose cannon on her hands (and needed help with not having it blow up on the university).

It gets worse.

He's got form for these "interests"

twitter.com/brucousin/status/1557479576271331328?s=21&t=NbgeJj-_0L0fhxzyNz5dgw

In the guardian!

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/11/manchester-university-phd-masturbating-to-comics-of-young-boys

I notice that they don't explain what these "comics" are actually about, it's not just images of young boys it's explicitly sexual. I notice that they also don't quote any of the more grim extracts from the published paper which detail exactly the method and outcome of his wanking efforts. Yeurch.

Honestly, I'm staggered that anyone gives this seriously dodgy man any credibility at all. What is he doing in an academic environment?? It's not research, he's taking advantage of anyone who is gullible enough to nod along with his pseudo intellectual wittering. Rather than telling him where to go, whilst also contacting the police.

There are some cracking comments on that substack.

I particularly liked the amusing illustration of the situation in anthropology where "wearing hats on your head is a Western imperialist construct. Before imperialism, everyone wore hats on their bums" is typical of the current attitude.

You wouldn't normally need permission from a university ethics committee to publish work based on previous research. If his supervisor has seen the substance of this paper, she should have intervened and told him that publishing would damage the university's reputation and would incur disciplinary action.

So depending how much she knew, you may have a problem at Manchester. But the real gatekeepers here were the editorial board of Qualitative Research. Unusually for a high profile broad subject journal, they're all from a single university - Cardiff.

Wasn't Jess Bradley at Manchester?

I think what is beginning to emerge here is the double standards that appear to operate in some university departments. Think of the experiences of Raquel Rosario Sanchez whose PhD was about men who pay for sex or James Caspian who wanted to research people who wanted to detransition. Both topics have the potential to benefit society. Both of them have described how they have faced major barriers and stressors to actually complete the research they wanted to do. I know I am understating their experiences massively.

Yes, and then at the NUS. I never heard the outcome of that whole very sordid affair. www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/jess-bradley-suspended-nus-statement-14972542

That was 2018? Jeez that’s the slowest investigation ever.

I seem to recall they just folded the whole NUS at Manchester rather than make any conclusion to the Bradley investigation. But I may be misremembering. Some similar nuclear response.

Honestly it looks like there's a whole long list of people who should have reported him but didn't.

Just read the Vice interview from >5 years ago and it contains so many red flags. Why didn't they escalate it? They question him quite heavily on the ethics of his magazines & websites.

Here's just one quote of many:

"What is it anyways, to "sexualise children" and what’s bad about it? It's not a real argument."

He's on youtube, with videos with titles that imply he's unpacking and discussing material that's illegal in the UK.

I think University of Manchester not picking it up is just the tip of iceberg to be honest.

WTF have I just read?

How in the anyone's world did this ever receive ethics clearance? Universities can't pretend to be unaware of how serious a potential ethics breach is, particularly one of this gravity. So a few possibilities exist: the ethics (standard requirement for all PhD research) were submitted on a disingenuous basis, approved and then not revised as the research progressed, or were approved in the form the research took (I'd genuinely like to know how) or have somehow slipped through the net, which given the methods of data storage and PhD upgrade approval, shouldn't even be possible.

As for the supervisors' research profile ...

I don't know what the hell our HE system has become. As an academic who was once passionate and committed to my subject and students, I've questioned for a while how I feel about being party to a morally corrupt system that now rewards mediocrity and kissing the right backsides, discourages critical thinking, and in which bullying, discrimination (and worse) is rife, despite the universities' constant, hypocritical virtue signalling. Even the union is as bad. I've lost faith in the sector completely and I know I'm not the only one reconsidering my future.

In a shock development, this story is reported in the graun. No comments allowed, natch.

This is academia being faced by men who enjoy flashing. And the answer from academia is, "Yes, carry on by all means, we'll give you a PhD." Even when it involves paedophilia? Something badly wrong.

FFS.

Is this another of those situations where male sex predators of the "academic" class are considered to have "amusing peccadilloes"?

Isn't this debasing all other doctorates, so that serious and valuable research can be met with the Pythons' "Nudge, nudge, wink, wink," and be ignored, while wildfires spread like, well, wildfires, the Great Barrier Reef collapses, Liz Truss thinks that deregulation from EU rules will solve the water crisis - a selection from this morning. And no-one needs take any notice of experts, because who knows what their expertise is in.

Wales has institutionalized queer theory in all its most glorious harm causing batshittery.
Well done Mark Drakeford!

Yes it is. My DH is a nuclear chemist and the calmest person you'll ever meet but he's absolutely furious about this. It makes a mockery of them of them all. His PhD students who are working their socks off developing processes for handling nuclear waste for the betterment of all our futures get lumped in with degenerates like this.

There ARE good PhDs in the humanities though. It is valuable (albeit in different ways to climate research or medical research).

The issue here is a bit separate. It’s about socially irresponsible research and PhDs being used to legitimise problematic political endeavours.

My old boss has a PhD in philosophy (or something like that) and another in Education.

Some research studies you hear off (‘do spiders dream’ or ‘how biscuits fall apart when dunked’) do have some ‘useful’ basis…

But this??? How can anyone have the bare faced cheek to put this into the world and have his name/face attacked???