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Proceedings Start Against Portland State University Professor Whose Carefully Crafted Fiction Helped Expose the Rot Within Some Sectors of Modern Academia
Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University in Oregon, led a trio of scholars last year who submitted to leading publications what they called "intentionally broken" papers on gender, race and sexuality. Several of those absurd pieces were published. Portland State University has now started disciplinary proceedings against Boghossian. From a report: The Oregon university's institutional review board concluded that Boghossian's participation in the elaborate hoax had violated Portland State's ethical guidelines, according to documents Boghossian posted online. The university is considering a further charge that he had falsified data, the documents indicate. Last month Portland State's vice president for research and graduate studies, Mark R. McLellan, ordered Boghossian to undergo training on human-subjects research as a condition for getting further studies approved. In addition, McLellan said he had referred the matter to the president and provost because Boghossian's behavior "raises ethical issues of concern."
Doing a find/replace on Mein Kampf to change the target of hate and getting it accepted by an accredited journal is quite a bit more than a "shoddy paper slipping through".
Clearly, the lack of credibility is not the problem. Writing bullshit articles is what everyone does. Only rarely does anyone get exposed.
Threatening the status quo is the problem. He should've just taken the credit and write more bunkum articles. Instead, he had to go and tell outsider people that being a fraud pays. He exposed himself, so now he's gotta hang twice. On the outside, for faking the science. But on the inside, for the exposing, threatening the livelihood of thousands of not-so-honest social "sciences" "researchers".
Social "sciences" has no scientific content left. They have professors that publicly admit to being "post-fact", IOW entirely unscientific. It's all ideology, perhaps even religion, with professors as high priests, and so on. This brings us to: Heretics aren't dangerous because they're wrong. They're dangerous because they might be right. And here's a heretic with proof he's right. Hanging AND burning is not good enough for such a horrible person. Or at least, that's what the university bureaucracy thinks of the whole affair. They really don't want to have to find and then admit they're hosting entire departments full of frauds, even though they really have to know by now. They like their cozy jobs.
I seriously argue that his behavior was ethical, because he knowingly published false papers and deliberately misled people in order to expose that those people (who were professional thinkers) were not thinking or even making a half-assed attempt to do their job.
Lying isn't always bad, and it's especially not-bad if it's done merely to troll someone and then you follow up by telling everyone that you lied.
He tested them, and testing them was the only thing he was doing. He wasn't doing it for personal enrichment, he wasn't doing it to justify some bullshit policy, and he wasn't doing it to mislead anyone about scientific observations or conclusions.
You hire a guy to watch your widgets for ten minutes. "I'll be back in ten minutes, no sooner." You noisily walk off in big, heavy boots, then out-of-view, you take them off, circle around, and tip-toe in your socks back to where the widgets and guard are. He's asleep!! You yell, "Hey, I hired you to guard my widgets!" and he wakes up and replies "you lied about when you would be back!" I think you did nothing unethical in this situation, and I think it's basically the same as this other dude's situation.
Let me clarify your carefully edited summation:
"a guy was making up data for papers and submitting them to journals" to show how horribly wrong the peer review / vetting process of these journals has gotten. He is now being retaliated against for showing the flaws in the system.
This is not about punishing a wrongdoer, this is about punishing a whistleblower.
That's a bad thing.