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."

Comments

Re:Papers on gender, race and sexuality?

[jeff4747]

Are there deep mysteries about gender and race that we struggle to understand?

Yes. It turns out like most human interaction on a large scale, it's pretty complicated.

Efforts to declare these fields "simple" are about the same as Flat Earthers. Their model is way simpler than the academics, but it's missing a whole lot of nuance that exists in the real world.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[Aighearach]

Ah, of course; shoot the messenger. Time honored "head in sand" technique.

That'll solve the credibility problem!

"Messenger" implies he told them about the problem, rather than having been one of the ones actively trying to expose the problem.

The messenger is uninvolved in the events that they're informing you about, that is why it is foolish to blame them for anything, and why their only involvement is as a source of information, which is generally useful to have.

In this case, the person being punished is one of the actively involved parties.

You're a living example of why we don't generally want professors to give deceptive lessons in order to teach other professors some sort of lesson; the means harm the student, and the ends don't mitigate the damage.

Re: Thou Shalt not Expose...

[GameboyRMH]

Attack the source all you want, you can't attack the facts and numbers they cite.

And Breitbart doesn't deny the rise of white nationalism, it attempts to rationalize and normalize it.

Re:skewl

[Sarten-X]

Fortunately, social science, like every other branch of science, does not need your faith to be real.

Social science is simply the study of our society. It does not push an agenda or "religion". It is the rigorous effort to understand the complex ways in which our society functions. Those complexities are themselves the emergent result of millennia of biology and history, now firmly entrenched in our human culture. You can't derive them from the more-theoretical fields like physics or geology. To understand the details of our society, you have to run experiments, revise theories, and openly share observations... you know, all the hallmarks of a real scientific discipline.

I understand the objection. We nerds greatly prefer having a nice outside perspective on our experiments. We like to think that we are the masters of our subjects. We pour the chemicals. We write the algorithms. We put the rat in the maze. It's distasteful to be a human in an experiment about humans.

That's precisely why we need science. Rigorous adherence to the scientific method, peer review of all work, and ethical review is absolutely vital, because corruption in social science has a more direct impact on researchers' lives outside of the academic field. A corrupt physicist might stand to gain an award or a research grant, but a corrupt social scientist could cause a genocide.

That brings us to this particular case. The professor wrote a bogus paper about bogus research. He then got it published in a journal, in an effort to discredit the field, just like your comment. His argument is that it's easy for bogus research to be published by a researcher acting in bad faith to simply make up claims and get them published, but nobody ever claimed otherwise. The foil against bad-faith researchers is to punish them with what is essentially expulsion from the field. That's what's happening here. He acted in bad faith, pursuing an agenda rather than understanding, and now the scientific community is rejecting him.

It's exactly the same as I would expect to happen if, say, someone claimed to have discovered a new kind of electromagnetic engine, and used that to defraud the scientific community, rather than to figure out what was really going on.

Science is hard. Behaving ethically is harder.

Not defending him

[aepervius]

I hate censorship, and IMO stupid ultra right wing conservative (with stupid idea should be allowed to speak up everywhere so that their utterly backward idiotic idea get shot down (and number 1 and 3 certainly belong to that category).
But YOU commit the logical error of pretending that his refusal of those people having a speech is NOT about the terrible things those people said or want (especially about 1 and 3) but of another unsaid factor. That alone tells more about you than about him : that you immediately went to their sexuality/gender/skin color shows your tendency of *reducing* people to that. Nothing in his post even hint at that ("That's right, one of the pillars of contemporary right-wing outrage is a completely fabricated issue, lacking even a kernel of truth and actually running counter to reality. Spread the word."). You are attributing your own reflex reaction to him.