patrick.net

When anyone gets banned from Twitter, that is a mark of distinction, a sign that we should definitely look into what they have to say.

Too bad that Lindsay does not have a Substack account (or a patrick.net account!) but he does have some of his material here:

https://newdiscourses.com/author/jameslindsay/

You might remember him as one of the guys who deliberately wrote bogus papers to show what bullshit gets published these days:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomlindsay/2019/09/28/from-where-comes-fake-news-from-fake-academic-studies/

What they did to expose the ideological corruption in grievance-studies was spectacularly successful, for which they received what all doers of good deeds receive in today’s universities—punishment.

Here’s what they did. The three scholars submitted 20 articles to “grievance studies” journals. All 20 of the articles were intentionally absurd. One was a feminist-themed revision of a portion of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Another argued that “dog parks are rape-condoning spaces and a place of rampant canine rape culture and systemic oppression against ‘the oppressed dog’ through which human attitudes to both problems can be measured.”

Apparently, every dog has his day. Both of the pieces were accepted for publication. In fact, the “canine-rape” study “won recognition for excellence by the feminist geography journal in which it was published, Gender, Place, and Culture.” Seven of the 20 hoax pieces were ultimately accepted for publication. ...

But the Academic Empire struck back. With a vengeance.

As reported here, Professor Boghossian has been charged by his university, Portland State (PSU). Although PSU admitted that the three professors “didn’t plagiarize or falsify data” when they submitted their hoax studies, it nonetheless ruled that Boghossian had “violated ethical guidelines on human-subjects research.”

What precisely does it mean that Boghossian’s whistleblowing “violated ethical standards on human-subjects research”? According to a PSU spokesman, “As he [Boghossian] has explained, his goal was to show that the editors of certain academic journals will publish even something as ridiculous as what he submitted.”