Even the biggest journals have to regularly retract papers, sometimes even by celebrated researchers.īut in this case, according to professor of gender studies at the University of Sussex Alison Phipps, writing in Times Higher Education, it's clear that the researchers were not engaging in "good-faith critique," as they claimed, but rather "actually aim to undermine fields they have political – not scholarly – objections to." Problems with quality and fraud are not limited to the humanities, nor to less prestigious journals. But we've known that for decades," said Ivan Oransky, from the site Retraction Watch.
#A dogs purpose exposed full
"We've learned that when you send in a convincing paper full of fake data, you can get it published. The hoaxes garnered joking ridicule on Twitter, but researchers were more concerned with the methods and ethics of the fake authors, and the potential for generalizations about the fields targeted. "If our project shows anything, it shows that what's coming out of these disciplines cannot currently be trusted," Lindsay told AFP. In the dog article, the authors claimed to have examined the genitals of nearly 10,000 canines. Some articles-such as a study of the impact of the use of an anal dildo by heterosexual men on their transphobia -even claimed to rely on data such as interviews, which could have been verified by the journal gatekeepers.įor that "study" the authors claimed to have interviewed 13 men. One of the published journal articles analyzes why a man masturbating while thinking of a woman without her consent commits a sexual assault.Īnother is a feminist rewrite of a chapter of "Mein Kampf." Lindsay-that is his real name-obtained a doctorate in mathematics in 2010 from the University of Tennessee and has been fully dedicated to this project for a year and a half. "Making absurd and horrible ideas sufficiently politically fashionable can get them validated at the highest level of academic grievance studies," said one of the authors, James Lindsay, in a video revealing the project.
The authors, writing under pseudonyms, intended to prove that academics in these fields are ready to embrace any thesis, no matter how outrageous, so long as it contributes to denouncing domination by white men. This time the fake research aims at mocking weak vetting of articles on hot-button social issues such as gender, race and sexuality. The article suggests that training men like dogs could reduce cases of sexual abuse.įaux research articles are not new: one of the most notable examples is physicist Alan Sokal, who in a 1996 article for a cultural studies journal wrote about cultural and philosophical issues concerning aspects of physics and math. Seven of the 20 fake articles written by the trio were accepted by journals after being approved by peer-review committees tasked with checking the authors' research.Ī faux study claiming that "Dog parks are Petri dishes for canine 'rape culture'" by one "Helen Wilson" was published in May in the journal Gender, Place and Culture.
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