‘Grievance Studies’ Prof Still Facing Punishment from Portland State
“has been placed under investigation and found to be guilty of research misconduct by his employer’s Internal Review Board”
This professor was part of a small group that embarrassed progressives in academia. Full back story here.
Campus Reform reports:
EXCLUSIVE: PSU poised to punish prof who proved point with hoax ‘dog rape’ article, despite receiving global praise for prof
Hundreds of academics, students, and other individuals have sent letters in support of the Portland State University professor who, along with two other academics, used “hoax papers” to expose faulty publishing in several academic journals.
In 2018, three academics decided to challenge esteemed “peer-reviewed” academic journals by producing and submitting false articles with what they thought were ridiculous theses.
Articles on rape culture being perpetuated in dog parks, fat bodybuilding, and the presence of toxic masculinity in “breastaurants” such as Hooters were all submitted, reviewed, and published by esteemed journals without a shred of fact or verifiable support.
Of the 20 “intentionally broken academic papers” written by the trio, seven were accepted and published in academic journals — the same journals that students are encouraged to consult when writing papers of their own. Another seven of the 20 were rejected, with the rest pending review before the ruse was uncovered…
Peter Boghossian, the Portland professor, has been placed under investigation and found to be guilty of research misconduct by his employer’s Internal Review Board (IRB). Specifically, he was accused of fabricating data and studying human subjects, specifically the various journal editors, without their consent. Given that the hoax papers were published with unsourced data under pseudonyms, Boghossian’s guilty verdict, while frustrating, was not a surprise to many.
What is still up in the air, however, is Boghossian’s punishment, which currently lies in the hands of the IRB and Mark McLellan, Portland State’s vice president for research and graduate studies.
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Comments
If there’s any punishment, it will be a measure of how little intellectual courage and academic freedom exist at that university.
A “parking ticket” would really be too much but if Portland State wants to save face and tap him on the wrist by suspending him a week with pay, I suppose that’s the minimum that could happen now. But anything more, anything remotely affecting his academic freedom, would destroy what’s left of the reputation of Portland State.
His work was academically important, exactly the sort of thing that academic freedom must protect.
It seems to me that he and the others provided a valuable service and they should be rewarded for their efforts.
He may have embarrassed all the right people, but that doesn’t change the fact that he submitted a fraudulent paper supported by fabricated data. Any organization less frivolous than The Onion would have to take such a transgression seriously.
Who was it that said the truth was always the first victim?