We did not cover the story, but a little while ago there was an academic paper published on rape culture in dogs. Basically, the line taken was to use the usual crazy feminist “men are all rapist” ideology, and apply it to dogs. Sure, there are epistemological and methodological problems about conceptualising doggy consent, but that did not stop the authors. Now it seems the paper, and others are fake, as far as anything is not fake in the world of the universities:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fake-news-comes-to-academia-1538520950
“The existence of a monthly journal focused on “feminist geography” is a sign of something gone awry in academia. The journal in question—Gender, Place & Culture—published a paper online in May whose author claimed to have spent a year observing canine sexual misconduct in Portland, Ore., parks. The author admits that “my own anthropocentric frame” makes it difficult to judge animal consent. Still, the paper claims dog parks are “petri dishes for canine ‘rape culture’ ” and issues “a call for awareness into the different ways dogs are treated on the basis of their gender and queering behaviors, and the chronic and perennial rape emergency dog parks pose to female dogs.”
The paper was ridiculous enough to pique my interest—and rouse my skepticism, which grew in July with a report in Campus Reform by Toni Airaksinen. Author Helen Wilson had claimed to have a doctorate in feminist studies, but “none of the institutions that offers such a degree could confirm that she had graduated from their program,” Ms. Airaksinen wrote. In August Gender, Place & Culture issued an “expression of concern” admitting it couldn’t verify Ms. Wilson’s identity, though it kept the paper on its website. All of this prompted me to ask my own questions. My email to “Helen Wilson” was answered by James Lindsay, a math doctorate and one of the real co-authors of the dog-park study. Gender, Place & Culture had been duped, he admitted. So had half a dozen other prominent journals that accepted fake papers by Mr. Lindsay and his collaborators—Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and Helen Pluckrose, a London-based scholar of English literature and history and editor of AreoMagazine.com.
The three academics call themselves “left-leaning liberals.” Yet they’re dismayed by what they describe as a “grievance studies” takeover of academia, especially its encroachment into the sciences. “I think that certain aspects of knowledge production in the United States have been corrupted,” Mr. Boghossian says. Anyone who questions research on identity, privilege and oppression risks accusations of bigotry. Beginning in August 2017, the trio wrote 20 hoax papers, submitting them to peer-reviewed journals under a variety of pseudonyms, as well as the name of their friend Richard Baldwin, a professor emeritus at Florida’s Gulf Coast State College. Mr. Baldwin confirms he gave them permission use his name. Journals accepted seven hoax papers. Four have been published.”
None of this surprises me. I did not even expect the doggie paper to be a hoax because there are plenty of more absurd things in the Arts/Farts/Humanities/Social pseudo-Sciences world, some things so horrible that one’s blood could freeze up, or in the alternative, boil. There are things paid for by tax. Academia is just another word for lies:
“A feminist academic journal published a hoax paper based on Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” that had been rewritten with feminist buzzwords. As a part of a wide-ranging hoax against various academic journals, Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay, and Peter Boghossian submitted a reimagining of Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf to a feminist journal for publication. The team of hoaxers submitted a version of Mein Kampf that had been rewritten from the perspective of an intersectional feminist. The paper, which was titled, “Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism,” received strong praise from its reviewers in academia. “The reviewers are supportive of the work and noted its potential to generate important dialogue for social workers and feminist scholars,” the journal’s co-editor-in-chief said upon first review.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/10/04/feminist-journal-accepted-hoax-anti-male-re-write-of-mein-kampf/
Without quality control, anything goes.