At The Bulwark today, College Fix Senior Reporter Christian Schneider writes about the so-called “Grievance Studies Hoax” perpetrated by Portland State Professor Peter Boghossian (pictured):
In our era of absurdity, it is both fitting and depressing that the professor behind a study that exposed how preposterous research papers could find their way into prestigious academic journals now finds himself in hot water. Peter Boghossian, author of the so-called “Grievance Studies Hoax,” is the academic version of a whistle-blower — but now he’s the one facing backlash.
Boghossian and his partners, researchers James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, teamed up in 2016 to draft outlandish papers that analyzed rape culture in dog parks, blamed “the conceptual penis” for climate change, and suggested silencing white males in college classrooms. (This paper counseled they should be made to sit on the floor in chains to experience “reparations”). The trio’s papers demonstrated that literally anything can earn the imprimatur of “research” as long it adheres to a certain progressive narrative.
Boghossian is now facing potential sanctions for his research, but other professors should be thanking him:
Given universities’ stated allegiance to “academic freedom,” further sanctions against Boghossian by Portland State would be unconscionable. He exposed the fraud and corruption within the publishing arm of academia, where the “publish-or-perish” culture forces faculty into, in his words, “pushing a kind of social snake oil onto a public that keeps getting sicker.”
In other words, if other researchers want to be taken seriously, they should embrace Boghossian’s silliness.
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