@MaggieCalvert , thanks for your post. I hope you'll get support from any other embarrassed, GC Aston employees or students who are watching this thread. For your own job security, just make sure that they are who they say they are before you reply. I'm glad you yourself have rewarding work and some brilliant colleagues. Long may that continue.
And that's the thing. These men (and a few women) from Aston who have stolen data from Mumsnet are not just unaware that they are dealing with real people, they also don't realise that the women posting here might be colleagues, maybe even from their own departments, or perhaps even their own wives, partners, mothers or daughters: women who have been careful to cover their tracks because they are wanting a space to chat away from you. Researchers may be stealing from their own backyard.
And some of those Aston men may have not noticed, because of their own sexism, the very articulate and intelligent way women here have been employing a great deal of common sense and critical thinking skills. There's a wide range of academic, research and professional expertise in our ranks which is why the early threads on Aston's actions filled up so quickly with highly relevant information, some of it quite specific to AIFL's research. And we know that there are well known women who post incognito on these forums, not just journalists, campaigners and writers, but possibly politicians and lawyers and maybe even people who make decisions about funding your organisation. You don’t know who is contributing, observing, and taking note.
Aston, I hope you do the decent thing. Firstly, by doing what Justine has asked you to do. Then apologise to Mumsnet users. Review the entire ethics and approval system for your research projects. Challenge each other to do what's right and appoint staff who act in a responsible, adult way. It would be amazing if you could be brave enough to share with the wider forensic linguistics world where you went wrong here, and why. Science relies on researchers being honest about mistakes and being open about sharing them so that everyone learns. And, as a last thought, please can you ask your HR department to arrange some basic training for senior staff which focuses exclusively on understanding women’s rights and sexism - and, by 'women', that means 'adult human females'. Thank you.