Peak Academic Absurdity By James reed

     This article needs to come with a graphic warning for gentle readers, but the issue should be discussed because it shows how insane the modern university has become, and that is now one of my main threads. An academic published a paper in a “scholarly’ journal about the culture of dog rape, by other dogs in parks, and she enaged in a personal examination of 10,000 sucxh incidents. That seems absurd. Doing the maths, I estimate that the recording would have taken about 500 or more hours, which is possible, but implausible. Now, it seems, even the identity of this academic is under question:
  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1475346?journalCode=cgpc20&
  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1507885 
  https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11199

“The publishers and editors of the viral academic article on “rape culture” in Portland dog parks admitted Monday that the author may have breached the publishing agreement by misleading them about her credentials.
Helen Wilson submitted her study—“Human Reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at Urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon”—to Gender, Place, and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography in 2017, claiming to editors that she held a doctorate in Feminist Studies. "To date, [Helen Wilson] has not responded to our request to provide appropriate documentation confirming their identity."

However, a Campus Reform investigation conducted after the article was published on May 22 revealed that no Feminist Studies PhD program in the United States has any record of Helen Wilson. Wilson also claimed to be the lead researcher at the Portland Ungendering Research (PUR) Initiative, but upon further inspection, it appears that the website for the initiative was only published four days after Wilson submitted her article. Since then, it has only ever existed with a disclaimer that it was being “taken down,” and is now completely defunct. [RELATED: Academic journal duped by author of ‘dog rape culture’ article] When reached by email, Wilson claimed she does indeed exist, but declined to verify if she actually conducted the research she claimed, or whether she actually has a PhD in Feminist Studies. The editors of the journal initially said authors are expected to abide by an honor code, but two weeks after Campus Reform published its investigation, the editors and publishers of the journal published an “Expression of Concern” regarding the veracity of the article.

“We, the Editors and Publishers…are issuing an expression of concern for [Wilson’s] article,” the statement begins, explaining that “This is due to a suspected breach of the following Publishing Agreement clause, signed by the author during the publication process.”

     Thus, an alleged academic can submit a so called scholarly paper in the Arts/Farts for peer review. It gets accepted. Then, after that there is doubt about whether or not the author is what she says she is, or if she even exists. If these papers are peer reviewed, why didn’t somebody check all of this out first? I would like to think that this is a great hoax, done to discredit the ARTs/Farts, like was done in 1996 with the Sokal hoax, where a physics prof submitted, and published an absurd postmodern paper deconstructing physics in a postmodern journal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

     This time round, the egg on the face of the Arts/Farts, may be thicker, and running for longer. Can I say it one more time: what possible reason do we have to keep universities alive on our public money? None; close them down and replace the entire higher education sector!
  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-08/conservative-students-feel-pressure-self-censor-succeed-campus