Wanky research pulled off website

[Ziggurat]

I suppose it was a good idea to pull it.

Pulling it is how this whole thing started.

Probably productive to do so.

Well, we know it's not reproductive to do so.

 

[Doubt]

If they don't stop publishing this sort of thing they will go blind.

 

[Brainster]

If they don't stop publishing this sort of thing they will go blind.

He would ask to keep doing it until he needs glasses, but um, that particular ship has already sailed.

 

[Darat]

I really don't want to do a search so I'll ask in the hope that someone here will know the answer. Surely "Shota" - described in the Vice article as "...an illustrated Japanese comic genre that depicts young, underage boys in sexualized ways or in sexually explicitscenarios surely that is in the UK going to be consider pornography and therefore illegal?

 

[JoeMorgue]

I'm not Googling the details at work, obvs, but in the US I know there's been court cases where the argument was is simulated or drawn child porn is child porn (or the same level of child porn or whatever).

 

[Darat]

I'm not Googling the details at work, obvs, but in the US I know there's been court cases where the argument was is simulated or drawn child porn is child porn (or the same level of child porn or whatever).

I thought that was the case in the UK as well, that's why I was surprised as the definition in the Vice article.

 

[theprestige]

I really don't want to do a search so I'll ask in the hope that someone here will know the answer. Surely "Shota" - described in the Vice article as "...an illustrated Japanese comic genre that depicts young, underage boys in sexualized ways or in sexually explicitscenarios surely that is in the UK going to be consider pornography and therefore illegal?

It sucks that this is even a question we have to ask. Pornography laws should be readily scrutable to any reasonable person. Nobody should ever be in any doubt about whether indulging a particular taste in erotica is a crime.

 

[Sherman Bay]

I'm not Googling the details at work, obvs, but in the US I know there's been court cases where the argument was is simulated or drawn child porn is child porn (or the same level of child porn or whatever).

This is one of those subjects that get decided by a court, then reversed on appeal, then reversed again on the next appeal. I used to track this particular question, but lost interest, and I've forgotten where the pendulum has swung right now. It's one way or the other.

 

[Myriad]

In theory, just as depictions of completely legal sexual scenarios can still be pornographic, depictions of illegal sexual scenarios are not necessarily pornographic. I wouldn't want to have to test that theory in court, but for example if the drawings don't include visible genitalia, it might be difficult to prosecute as pornographic even when it's clearly implied, or explicitly stated in words, that illegal sex takes place in the fictional scenario.

 

[Random]

It sucks that this is even a question we have to ask. Pornography laws should be readily scrutable to any reasonable person. Nobody should ever be in any doubt about whether indulging a particular taste in erotica is a crime.

The problem you are leaving out is the producers. Between the people trying to make pornography illegal for moral reasons and people consuming pornography for prurient interests, the people who actually produce the stuff are constantly making adjustments to their product to stay ahead of the law. This forces people to make further changes in the law, leading to more adjustments from producers.

A one-liner like, "I am your step-mother/brother/uncle/whatever", solves a lot of legal problems for producers, and is easy for consumers to tune out.

 

[d4m10n]

Nobody should ever be in any doubt about whether indulging a particular taste in erotica is a crime.

UK law is relatively clear on this; the autoethnographer in question picked the wrong jurisdiction to conduct this sort of research.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

TBH, even leaving the legal aspect aside, I'm kinda dismayed that this even got published in the first place. I mean:

Anthropology in the 20'th century: I lived for a year among the jungle tribes of Bumscrewistan to understand their customs

Anthropology in the 21'st century: I'll just write about how I feel about my masturbating to comics. (Or in the case of that Cat Pause fellow, "about how I feel about being asked to actually produce research if I want research money.")

Like, fer fork's sake, find a proper statistically significant group of other wankers and produce a proper study

Or maybe it's just nostalgia on my part. But then again, even nostalgia no longer is what it used to be

 

[Random]

TBH, even leaving the legal aspect aside, I'm kinda dismayed that this even got published in the first place. I mean:

Anthropology in the 20'th century: I lived for a year among the jungle tribes of Bumscrewistan to understand their customs

Anthropology in the 21'st century: I'll just write about how I feel about my masturbating to comics. (Or in the case of that Cat Pause fellow, "about how I feel about being asked to actually produce research if I want research money.")

Like, fer fork's sake, find a proper statistically significant group of other wankers and produce a proper study

Or maybe it's just nostalgia on my part. But then again, even nostalgia no longer is what it used to be

How it got published is a genuine mystery. I saw that it was released in April and thought it might be a badly conceived prank, but it looks like it was published on the 26th of April, not the 1st.

If it was not an April Fools prank, then the editor of Qualitative Research needs to be fired.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

TBH, I'm not that fond of April's fool's articles and videos from otherwise respectable sources anyway. It's a pain in the butt to deal with people who misunderstood the serious articles, no need to give them that kind of extra ammo. You just know that they'll take it seriously if it supports their cognitive dissonance.

But yeah, this one doesn't seem to even have that excuse.

 

[theprestige]

How it got published is a genuine mystery.

I'm not sure it's that mysterious. Once a process is established as authoritative and valuable, it's going to attract all sorts of carpetbaggers, grifters, and cargo cultists looking to leverage the perceived legitimacy of the process to gain legitimacy for themselves without actually qualifying. "Peer review" is, I think, at this point in its life cycle as an institution. There's lot of journals out there pretending to be reputable. There's lots of reviewers going through the motions as a sinecure. There's lots of dishonest "researchers" looking for holes in the enforcement of standards, into which they can shove... Well, you get the idea.

Peer review is still a good principle. And there are still plenty of journals that do it right. But there are also plenty of journals that are jackassery masquerading as science. I don't think this has been a mystery since at least the Sokal affair.

 

[d4m10n]

I don't think this has been a mystery since at least the Sokal affair.

I've seen worse.

 

[Ziggurat]

I've seen worse.

That one was also a fake, akin to Sokal.

 

[theprestige]

I've seen worse.

I referred to the Sokal affair because it was one of the first to demystify the failure modes of commodity peer review, not because it was one of the worst.

 

[d4m10n]

That one was also a fake, akin to Sokal.

I referred to the Sokal affair because it was one of the first to demystify the failure modes of commodity peer review, not because it was one of the worst.

Jeez you guys, I know.

Just wanted to link to the infamous dog park paper.

ETA: I wonder whether if the horny doggy paper did more to advance the state of human knowledge than the dodgy wanky paper.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I think people who love to bring up the Sokal Paper miss two important things:

1. It was published in a journal that did NOT (yet) do any peer review, and did NOT ask any expert's opinion before publishing it, so it really doesn't prove much. It's like saying I could self publish something written by my simple Markov Chains program on Amazon. Yes, I could. So what exactly does it prove about anything else?

I mean, it's not a whole lot different than posting it on this site, which as the link above proves, I jolly well could. Just that nobody stopped me from posting it in the religion and philosophy forum here, doesn't really say anything about the state of philosophy (or religion) anywhere else.

2. It was in a journal of postmodernist twaddle, and frankly, it wasn't all even that ill-fitting there. I would assume that even after being told it's a hoax, a lot of post-modern philosophy professors were left scratching their heads as to how could you tell it apart from a genuine one. Or would be, if they did any honest introspection But at any rate, I don't expect they actually had anyone qualified in Physics in their staff, nor I suspect were they interested in how the Physics part checks out, as long as it does the right kind of navel gazing.


Basically a lot of people seem to imagine it shows some profound and lamentable stuff about the state of peer-reviewed technical journals, when the whole point is that it wasn't either. If anything Sokal just showed what happens when you DON'T do peer review.