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Portland State IRB goes after philosopher for critical studies hoax

Wow is this a dumb move. Here’s hoping their Senate takes action to defend his academic freedom. From InsideHigherEd:

Peter Boghossian

A hoax revealing that academic journals had accepted fake papers on topics from canine “rape culture” in dog parks to “fat bodybuilding” to an adaption of Mein Kampf met with applause and scorn in the fall. Fans of the project tended to agree with the hoaxers that critical studies scholars will validate anything aligned with their politics. Critics said that the researchers acted in bad faith, wasting editors’ and reviewers’ time and very publicly besmirching academe in the process: the story was covered by nearly every major news outlet.

Now the controversy has flared up again, with news that one of the project’s authors faces disciplinary action at his home institution. Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University and the only one of three researchers on the project to hold a full-time academic position, was found by his institutional review board to have committed research misconduct. Specifically, he failed to secure its approval before proceeding with research on human subjects — in this case, the journal editors and reviewers he was tricking with his absurd but seemingly well-researched papers.

3 Comments

  1. Conservative duck 01/09/2019

    Sounds like a big dose of “implicit bias” to me.

  2. honest Uncle Bernie 01/09/2019

    Looks like Portland State is determined to make a laughing stock of itself. They are falling into the same trap as the journals that fell for this shit. If Tom Wolfe were still with us, he could make hay with this.

  3. Lardman 01/10/2019

    The ‘academic journal’ industrial complex will not take this lying down.

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