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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."

17 of 631 comments (clear)

  1. Thou Shalt not Expose... by sycodon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...The absurdities of Academia.

    Clearly proof that our Universities are broken.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    1. Re: Thou Shalt not Expose... by Jarwulf · · Score: 5, Informative
      Alright I'll bite, let's look at your 'cold hard' facts and numbers

      An analysis of data from Georgetown University’s Free Speech Project by the project’s director, Sanford Ungar, published on Medium. Given that there are 4,583 colleges and universities in the United States (the bulk of which are four-year institutions), dozens of incidents is ... not a lot. When you limit it to just conservative targets, the number becomes even smaller. Now, some might consider a few dozen incidents a year in a country of 4,583 higher education institutions a national crisis; I would consider it perhaps unfortunate, but not a crisis.

      Basically, it looks like some guy makes this online tool to look at free speech, that appears to focus mostly on (Administrative) Actions, repeatedly says its not comprehensive and then analyzes a subset of this dataset. The Vox author takes this and somehow comes to the conclusion that this disproves the entire phenomenon that colleges are biased against conservatives. That...is pretty much the crux of the entire article. So...is this the best you can do? Lol....

    2. Re: Thou Shalt not Expose... by zugmeister · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. Shoot the messenger by grasshoppa · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    That'll solve the credibility problem!

    --
    Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
  3. Re:Awwww by sycodon · · Score: 5, Informative

    The idiots were the publications that published the fake, absurd papers on fake, absurd "disciplines" of study.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  4. Ethical Concern by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    -- "In addition, McLellan said he had referred the matter to the president and provost because Boghossian's behavior "raises ethical issues of concern.""

    The ethical concern being that Boghossian displayed some ethics?

    1. Re:Ethical Concern by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Informative

      does not excuse his behavior.

      Yes, it does. This is how you expose fraud in the system. You have a better way?

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    2. Re:Ethical Concern by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You can't seriously argue that his behavior was ethical, he knowingly published false papers and deliberately misled people. That he did so to reveal a major problem in the industry is beneficial to us, but does not excuse his behavior.

      He did so with the explicit intent to show the problems in a trusted system. Seriously, we are on a technology website. This process is security research. Every patch, every security advisory, every exposed exploit, the whole industry is based on the premise that proving the emperor has no clothes is a good thing.

      Without the proof, nobody listens and the issues in trusted systems continue.

      Intent matters. Testing trust isn't unethical. If you haven't got it by now, time to retire bucko.

    3. Re:Ethical Concern by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You can't seriously argue that his behavior was ethical, he knowingly published false papers and deliberately misled people.

      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.

    4. Re:Ethical Concern by lgw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      His behavior was perfectly ehtical. Publishing false papers with the intent of permanent deception is unethical (and probably the case with most published papers in several fields). That wasn't the case here: they revealed the deception quickly.

      Also, let's be clear here: their attempts would have failed if there wasn't a problem to expose. Any harm you imagine they did is being done routinely by people with entirely unethical motives in those fields and journals.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  5. Re:Proves nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    His papers weren't just "shoddy" though. They were deliberately over-the-top absurd to prove a point that these journals are thirsting for absurd narratives to hold up as science.

  6. Re:Proves nothing by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Informative

    7 out of the 20 papers got published. That is more than a few "slipping through". It throws the entire system into doubt when over a third of the fake "research" is published and reviewed.

  7. Re:Proves nothing by fortythirteen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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".

  8. Re:Proves nothing by zugmeister · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you look into it a bit more, you'll see they were in the process of doing many more of these "fake" papers and got caught out. They were forced to go public before they were done.

    If you manage to get a modified excerpt of Mein Kampf published in a professional journal, you should be given kudos for exposing a serious problem.
    I'm curious, what other whistleblowers do you think are deserving of "disciplinary action" for exposing how screwed up something is?

  9. No, hang the heretic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:No, hang the heretic by anegg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      I think the parent post containing this quote hits the nail on the head. The individual in question has shown rampant foolishness exists in the educational system, and the system is reacting to defend itself. The same thing happens to some individuals who expose glaring IT security holes (and correctly notify the owners rather than sell off knowledge of the vulnerabilities) - instead of being thanked and the holes patched up, the individuals are excoriated as bad actors and the holes are retained.

      If the educational institution in question was honestly bent on continual improvement, they would be focused on how to better the environment so that blatant horseshit wouldn't be put on a pedestal (published) rather than being filtered out. Sure, the individual intentionally created the material to be horseshit, but isn't even worse when material that is also certainly horseshit even though it wasn't meant to be such is published? The peer review process is supposed to filter out horseshit, and testing the system to see whether it works seems like a good idea to me. Shooting the person who found a fault in the system isn't going to encourage the elimination of faults in the future.

  10. Re:Proves nothing by Tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    His papers were much more than that. Some of them came to conclusions that were not only not supported, but actually the opposite of what the included data showed. These should have been rejected flat out by any halfway competent reviewer. They were clearly accepted not for their scientific insight or contribution, but for the narrative they supported.

    That should be the real scandal. These papers should be under fire, and those reviewers should be investigated.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org