On October 2, 2018, the Wall Street Journal broke a story that detailed an unprecedented audit of certain sectors of academic research, specifically those we—its authors—called “grievance studies.” In that effort, which has come to be known as the Grievance Studies Affair, Portland State University assistant professor of philosophy Peter Boghossian joined the two of us in writing and submitting a series of academic papers in fields like gender studies, race studies, sexuality studies, and so on. Our goal was to understand and expose a corruption of scholarship that puts politically motivated research ahead of honest inquiry in these disciplines. Given that seven of our papers were published—with a realistic potential for several more,—the international headlines, and ensuing academic debate on the issue, we think we were reasonably successful.
Portland State appears less impressed. It took Peter’s administration ten days from the breaking of the story to formally initiate a Committee of Inquiry to determine whether he had engaged in research misconduct. This announcement arrived in Peter’s email in the form of a formal letter dated October 12, sent as a follow-up to an exploratory meeting with him held three days earlier.
“I have arrived at that decision and find enough concerns that I have decided to initiate a formal Committee of Inquiry,” wrote Mark McLellan, Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies at PSU. Specifically, this Committee would be investigating the issue of whether the fabrication of data for some of the papers in the grievance studies audit constituted a breach of research ethics, a proceeding which they notified him may take up to sixty days. McLellan also referred his concerns about the Grievance Studies Affair to Portland State University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). This board’s duty was to determine whether or not conducting the audit should have required ethical approval and the informed consent of the targeted journals’ editors and peer reviewers. Obviously, we did not and could not seek any such approval or consent.
In the meantime, early in November, an anonymous “collective” of a dozen Portland State University faculty members penned an open letter to PSU students, ominously (and vaguely) urging them to consider what Peter’s participation in the grievance study audit might “mean for their education.” The piece was too sloppy and amateurish even to consider viable as a cheap hit-piece, though it was certainly nasty and unfair enough to qualify. Its (ridiculous) conclusion? “Some faculty practice education in bad faith right in your own backyard. This is to the detriment of the university’s reputation and the serious scholars trying to make PSU an excellent place to seek higher education.”
Roughly six weeks after their October 12 letter, the Committee of Inquiry, headed by McLellan, followed up with Peter regarding their deliberations. In a letter dated November 27, 2018, the committee wrote, “The Committee unanimously agreed that the ‘dog park’ article represents an unambiguous example of research data fabrication.”
Of note, “Dog Park” was, by far, the silliest of our papers, which was a point we always intended to reveal in full to the public once our audit was completed. In it we claimed, extremely implausibly, to have examined 10,000 dogs’ genitals before interrogating their owners about their sexual orientations. This clearly preposterous “data” was used as a basis for interpreting human reactions to unwanted dog-humping incidents so as to conclude that a human rape culture exists and could be improved by training men like dogs. We wanted to see if reviewers or editors would ask to see this data or question the conclusions we drew from it. They did not and, in fact, the paper was recognized for excellence within feminist geography.
This is very troubling. So too is the fact that some academics are now claiming that the problem with this paper is that we didn’t actually examine dogs’ genitals by the thousands—that is, that we fabricated this data. Not only is this clearly missing the point, but it is a blatant distortion of the intentions of indispensable ethical rules about data fabrication. These rules are intended to penalize calculated deception of a very specific type. They’re meant to act as a safeguard against and a sanction for researchers who contrive to promote their own advancement directly by passing off and maintaining bogus data with no intention to reveal the truth, which does not apply in our case. They are not reasonably or honestly applicable—nor were they ever intended to be—to academic audits conducted in order to gain evidence of a systemic problem with knowledge production, which would ultimately be revealed as such in a timely manner.
The Committee’s letter goes on, “Given these conclusions, and the fact that the Committee only reviewed the ‘dog park’ article, one of many articles published with potentially fabricated data, we find there is sufficient evidence to warrant further investigation of research misconduct.” Before its close, this letter also refers to the separate IRB investigation, which the committee acknowledged falls outside of its scope. At present, the research misconduct investigation remains open and presumably active.
The Portland State University IRB met and rendered a decision on December 14. Their task was to determine whether the work done as a part of the Grievance Studies Affair constitutes human-subjects research, which rightly would require both ethics board approval and the informed consent of all human participants. This is clearly ludicrous—or an intentional distortion of another crucial research safeguard—because it is impossible to conduct a valid quality assurance investigation, which this audit was, after informing those being audited that they’re under examination.
Nevertheless, in a letter dated December 17, 2018, Peter was informed that he had failed to secure the necessary IRB approval to participate in our grievance studies audit. As a distinct upside to this bizarre turn of the institutional thumbscrews, the Portland State University IRB determined our work “met the federal definition of ‘research’ (45 CFR 46.102) as the project was a systematic investigation designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.” Despite the circumstances, we feel compelled to offer our sincere appreciation to the Board for formally and officially legitimizing our work in this way.
In the same letter, the Portland State University IRB indicated that “the project met the federal definition of ‘human subject’ (45 CFR 46.102),” by whom they mean the “journal editors and reviewers,” who are “living individuals” with whom we (meaning only James Lindsay) interacted “to collect data about them through communication and interpersonal contact.” Well, yes. That would have been the point of the audit of their review and publication practices, although the board’s enthusiasm to stretch the usual intentions of these regulations is evident in their inclusion of the reviewers, who are exempted from such a status in Portland State University’s own research guidelines [see 4.1(2)] by their guarantee of anonymity.
Four days later, on December 21, Mark McLellan sent another letter to Peter, and it wasn’t to wish him a merry Christmas. This letter was sent to inform him of the results of the Institutional Review Board’s investigation. Therein, he summarized the previous letter and observed, “Your efforts to conduct human subjects research at PSU without a submitted nor approved protocol is a clear violation of the policies of your employer.” He then let Peter know that his supervisors have been informed of this determination, as have the university president and provost.
These administrators will determine further disciplinary action against Peter, potentially including his firing. In the meantime, he is restricted from performing any human-subjects research, at least until he has completed an appropriate training protocol “to be identified and proctored by the Assistant Vice President for Research Administration, Dawn Boatman.” It will, at least, be interesting to see the ethical protocol this training will provide for performing academic quality audits with the full, informed consent of the auditees, which would defeat the point of auditing them.
In summary, Portland State University’s administration has begun to take action against Peter Boghossian due to his participation in the Grievance Studies Affair. The administration has levied an accusation of potential research misconduct against Peter for having made use of patently ridiculous fabricated data in a few of the papers we submitted as part of this audit, which is a clear distortion of the important prohibition of fabricating or falsifying data in scientific research. They have also concluded Peter is guilty of a research ethics violation in that he conducted human-subjects research without approval, including failing to obtain the informed consent of those subjects, and has been temporarily barred from engaging in other human-subjects research. This is risible—at best—because it renders any quality-assurance audit of the peer-review and journal-publishing systems impossible.
We conclude that the accusations Peter faces are both irresponsible and a ludicrous embarrassment to Portland State University, its administration, and academia more broadly. Why? They are irresponsible not least because they set a dangerous precedent of taking research and ethical guidelines out of context and using them punitively. They are a ludicrous embarrassment because this distortion is being applied in an apparent attempt to punish a faculty member for having engaged in a praiseworthy effort intended to improve scholarship on important subjects. It seems very likely this is happening because it called into question (and embarrassed) certain protected classes of “academic” pursuit—something that in principle should not even exist. Furthermore, this not only threatens Peter’s job and future prospects, but PSU students’ access to education on critical thinking as it is not clear his classes would be continued by anyone else.
Penalizing Peter on either of these fronts, given his full intention to reveal the true nature of the papers in a timely manner and his lack of intention to benefit directly from them under false pretenses, is unjust, contrary to academic freedom, and would set a terrible precedent for future attempts to examine or critique systems of knowledge production. At the same time, it puts Portland State University at a crossroads. It needs to decide which kind of institution it wants to be and what that means for its students’ educations: one dedicated to advancing Social Justice at any cost or one dedicated to free inquiry and the pursuit of truth. It cannot be both.
What is so worrisome is that the admins themselves cannot see the absurdity, the stupidity of their actions, the inquisition-like protection of the new ‘social justice religiosity’. Suddenly, the faculty and students are expected to “kneel” in front of violent, destructive tribes posing as social avatars. Because of the craveness of university administrators, these toxic movements have now oozed into politics, infecting the Democratic party… as well as sports, entertainment, companies. Where are the adults in the room???
Just what one would expect. After all, “administrators” are the people who allowed the standards to degrade in the first place, are they not?
Has the idea of starting your own small university or online education platform ever come up?
By now you could start probably the greatest university in America, it wouldn’t be hard looking at the degrading quality of the competition.
Sorry for posting to this discussion so late. The Portland State IRB attempt to apply human subject protection guidelines to this study is incoherent on the face of it. Any lawyer, if it comes to that, will easily be able to show that it is a case of harassment against the professor. On a related note, it’s another example of how IRB regulations continue to expand far beyond their original scope, now for the purpose of limiting free expression. If the authors of the grievance studies ever used the terms “data” or “research” in describing their work, it is obvious to any fair-minded person that the information that they gathered was, from a legal point of view, neither “data” nor “research” because it was a HOAX. It was “data” and “research” only in the figurative, non-technical or broad non-academic sense. IRB guidelines do not apply.
[…] nor approved protocol is a clear violation of the policies of your employer.” according to Areo. Human Subjects Research? Yup, that’s right, the human subjects were the morons that peer […]
In a perfect world the powers that be at PSU would recognise the importance of the work done by the hoaxers, and procedural transgressions aside would praise Peter Boghossian for his courageous dedication to the pursuit of truth and integrity of knowledge (not to shaming as suggested by some misguided commenters here), and they would take this opportunity to decide what side of history they want to be on. In reality PSU would have come under pressure from grievance studies acolytes, add to that the possibility that some of the administration are themselves academically compromised by the ideology, or at least not sufficiently courageous to stand up to the mob, and they will be consequently highly motivated to find fault with the project using whatever technical lines they can – regardless of spirit and common-sense. (For that matter I think there is reason to suspect that if the hoaxers had… Read more »
You three provided an invaluable service to humanity, and yes, to social justice, as there can be no justice where there is sloppy reasoning.
The result of your quality control inspection was ROTFL hilarious, so thanks for making me laugh each time I think of it.
One especially funny fact was that the readers so failed to spot the spoofs within a millisecond, as they ought to have done, that they complained about their time having been wasted.
You all are heroes.
I am wondering whether the position would be different if the identities of the journals and editors had been anonymised in the publication. Of course, the public impact would have been considerably less – on the other hand it would have been more difficult to argue that humans had been harmed. One could imagine an IRB might have approved the study under those conditions. There again, would it be necessary to inform the IRB of the specific disciplines to be targeted? It could all have been described at a very abstract level and structured as a comparative study of refereeing and editorial standards across disciplines. Or would this then be construed as having deceived the IRB?
@AP is arguing for the letter of the law. Others are arguing for the spirit. Having been involved with both animal and human IRB’s since their inception, I go for the spirit. Also, the potential to be embarassed is an occupational hazard for being and editor or reviewer – been the latter for donkey’s years, and some of my best friends are editors of academic journals (respectable ones). Any that think training men like dogs is a valid notion deserve what they get.
Many years ago a funded study went down the tubes. We were looking at recovery of lung function, comparing spinal and general anaesthesia. Part of the reason was that in the IRB, the anaesthesiologist insisted he told all patients what the probabilities were for temporary or permanent paralysis from the former and death from the latter. It turns out most people would rather be dead than paralysed, so they refused randomization. I have had spinal anaesthesia twice and epidurals twice. Never were the risks explained in numerical terms as we were required to do. No one I have spoken to has had the risk of death or paralysis raised by the anaesthetist before surgery. One reason is that a calm and relaxed subject can be more smoothly anaesthetised. For example, a stressed subject secretes more in the lungs and this is a ‘bad’ thing; they need more drugs for a… Read more »
[…] Academic Freedom or Social Justice: What Kind of University is Portland State? – Een van de auteurs van de recente serie hoax-artikelen in de “grievance studies”, Peter […]
Reading through all these comments, it’s clear that when the world ends only the grunts on the ground will survive. Good grief.
the fear-mongering about poor students’ access to critical thinking courses is as cartoonish as anything else in this whole constructed controversy. the only boghossian-specific courses in the philosophy department were atheism and new atheism. every other course he has instructed has been, and will continue to be, taught by better academics.
Consider the case of a journalism prof who is investigating the mayor of a town for taking bribes. Is he to inform the mayor that he is being investigated? Or what about environmental studies profs sneaking onto corp land and taking water samples. Would they get in trouble? of course not.
[…] “Your efforts to conduct human subjects research at PSU without a submitted nor approved protocol is a clear violation of the policies of your employer,” wrote PSU Vice President Mike McLellan in an email to Boghossian, according to Areo. […]
[…] discipline, and who gets to legitimise new knowledge. Now, following a Portland State University investigation into Peter Boghossian, it is also raising questions about academic […]
This sounds a lot like the Rosenhan studies of the 1970s, where fake schizophrenia patients were sent to various clinics to see if the clinicians could detect sanity. This was of course before the formal IRM system was instituted. But it is very similar. The results are pretty much the same from both studies.
Its a fair point that he should have gone through the university’s ethics process beforehand.
However, looking through our University’s ethics application process, I don’t think any of the “tick boxes” suggesting potential problems really apply. All the stuff about informed consent deals with “interviews or surveys” which isn’t really what this is. If I had reviewed this I would certainly have asked for clarification that no sensitive personal information was being collected, but I don’t see any reason to bump it up to “high ethical risk” status.
Hence it should be a slap on the wrist for not filling in the forms, nothing more.
The problem, as far as I can tell from what I’ve read here and elsewhere, is Boghossian and his colleagues did not know anything (or at least not enough) about IRB and the bureaucracy mandated by federal law when studying humans. And yes, this is a study of humans because what was being studied here was not the content of the bogus papers; what was being studied was the reactions of reviewers and editors– particularly how easily they were being duped. The other problem here is their intention (again, as far as I can tell) was to humiliate and embarrass editors and reviewers, and generally speaking, conducting academic research with the intention of humiliating/embarrassing the subjects you are researching is a no-no. It doesn’t really surprise me all that much that Boghossian and his colleagues seem pretty unaware (until after the fact!) of the IRB review. After all, scholars in… Read more »
So, if the researchers examined dog genitals in dog parks for real, it would’ve been a sound study? Good grief.
[…] harm came to the peer reviewers or journal editors, Boghossian apparently did some real damage. Areo, whose editor, Helen Pluckrose, was one of the three members of Boghossian’s group along with […]
[…] harm came to the peer reviewers or journal editors, Boghossian apparently did some real damage. Areo, whose editor, Helen Pluckrose, was one of the three members of Boghossian’s group along with […]
You provide no evidence whatsoever that the action is punitive. To the contrary, IRB approval is required of virtually all research, and can cover deception when necessary. You don’t get a free pass because you think your research is really, really important. If you had bothered to learn something about the fields you claim to be debunking you would have known that going in.
I think it is shocking that 10,000 dogs, who had the reasonable expectation of being watched licking their genitals, went unobserved. Think what harm has been done to the dogs. Truly shameful.
[…] Lindsay and Pluckrose put it in Areo, the choice seems to be between “advancing Social Justice at any cost” and “free inquiry and […]
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The Project as I understand it, did not seem to involve the researchers conducting research of any “human subjects” as the University claims. The regulation the University relies on defines a ”human subject” as “a living individual ABOUT WHOM an investigator …. conducting research: (i) Obtains information…” (Emphasis added). If the human subjects of this research were the “journal editors and reviewers” that were interacted with by the researchers, I assume those interactions did not involve the researchers obtaining information ABOUT these editors and reviewers. In other words, this regulation appears to only apply to persons of whom the researcher obtains information ABOUT and not merely to persons of whom a researcher obtains information FROM.
Please write to PSU and opine on this affair, especially if you are a professor. president@pdx.edu
[…] “Your efforts to conduct human subjects research at PSU without a submitted nor approved protocol is a clear violation of the policies of your employer,” wrote PSU Vice President Mike McLellan in an email to Boghossian, according to Areo. […]
[…] “Your efforts to conduct human subjects research at PSU without a submitted nor approved protocol is a clear violation of the policies of your employer,” wrote PSU Vice President Mike McLellan in an email to Boghossian, according to Areo. […]
I strongly recommend the people being persecuted here contact FIRE (Foundation for individual rights in education), as there is clearly a litigation to be had here.
Who f-ing cares. Obnoxious liberal academia bashing obnoxious liberal academia.
I’m a BSME graduate from Ohio State University. A 12B veteran to boot. Professional for almost 20 years.
The article is jibberish. No solid factual epiphanies. Nothing.. blah blah blah
It reads like a postmortem report of a left wing loser getting fired from a left wing institution.
Here’s a hint….
Stop with all the hoighty toighty crap and speak f-ing English.
Clearly state the issue and then clearly state the data and the freakin point.
And you morons wonder why nobody respects you.
I would inform the nice people at PSU that you all welcome guidelines for research that you will then use to contrast all prior similar research against… I don’t think they have been equally diligent up until now.
Further I would inform them that this was research for science data journalism, not academia. The academic papers just use these journalistic works and data to recap and inform 😉
The work of Boghossian, Pluckrose, and Lindsay is highly important as part of the self-examination of contemporary American academic research. The attempt to stretch the perfectly legitimate and important strictures on the use of human subjects in research, evolved to deal with horrendous violations (like Tuskegee) is here being stretched out of all plausible relation to both its original intent and historical use if those performing reviews for journals, and journal editors, are themselves to be regarded as “research subjects” of the very papers they are judging. If someone sent identical papers to journals under male-typical vs. female-typical names to discover bias, would that be a similar violation? I wager that the legal system would be very interested in the intent and motivation for such an expansion of the power of the university to control what its faculty inquire into, and whatever disciplinary costs they may want to impose on… Read more »
I think the research was a great idea and the results very relevant. The typical Grievance Studies areas have been shown to be quite corrupt. That makes the research that Boghossian et al have undertaken is worthwhile. They made one mistake, however and in this point I must say that PSU is correct. In principle they have indeed performed a study with human test subjects, without informed consent. In this case the study objective would have been rendered impossible with informed consent, But still, they have not passed the proposed research by an ethical committee. That is the one thing they should have done, to describe their proposed research and explain why an informed consent was detrimental to the success of the study. Let us assume that the PSU had functioned correctly and allowed the research to take place, then they would have had a written proposal with stamp of… Read more »
The ‘fake papers’ need to be weighed by their objectives and in the largest context of Truth as sine qua non. Today’s academic institutions, which apparently believe in Grievance Studies as a legitimate academic field, are likely incapable of applying apropos standards. The resulting injustice will be exceeded only by the irony. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.
I know it’s not terribly helpful to get suggestions like this after the fact, but use of a research preregistration service could have saved your group from having to argue about what your intentions had been…
if academia spent as much time and effort actually peer-reviewing these peer-reviewed papers as they have searching for loopholes to strangle a professor with we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Just a point…but if you were self identified as journalists you would not need ethical approval. As journalists you’re not seeking to publish this as peer reviewed research. Does PSU demand that ethical approval be sought for research even when it is not intended for publication in peer review journals or presentation at academic conferences? You can undertake research on human subjects for some classroom activities without IRB approval, no? I’m just wondering about the question of authorial intention on the part of Helen, Lindsay and Peter and what bearing that might have on an IRB application. Technically, as a member of faculty any research on human subjects, even low risk, would require review by IRB at the very least, although not necessarily approval (we’ve had this clarified at our own institution over the last couple of years)…
In recent years there have been several studies sending CVs and job applications with fake names to find out if the hiring process of organizations is sexist or not. Have the people handling these applucations and CVs really been warned in advance? I would assume not.