Ballsy hoax proves journals wouldn’t know humour if it bit them

A “no satire” rule could really cramp the style of the modern university. Take the case of Peter Boghossian, assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University in the US. Last November, he got an official letter saying his “dog park” article was “an unambiguous example of research data fabrication”.

The proper title of that article was “Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity in Urban Dog Parks”, and it owed its data to the “tactful” inspection of “the genitals of slightly fewer than 10,000 dogs whilst interrogating owners as to their sexuality”. The paper urged that men be trained like dogs, and issued a “a call for awareness into the different ways dogs are treated on the basis of their gender and queering (behaviours), and the chronic and perennial rape emergency dog parks pose to female dogs”. The editor of the peer-reviewed Gender, Place & Culture was delighted to include this research in the journal’s 25th anniversary issue, saying it drew “attention to so many themes from the past scholarship informing feminist geographies”.

It was a hoax, one of seven absurd papers accepted by reputable journals last year. Boghossian and two other disenchanted academics had set out to test whether the gatekeepers of “grievance studies” — focused on identity and power struggles — could detect gibberish offered up by pseudonymous scholars. The trio even recycled a chapter of Hitler’s Mein Kampf — “Our Struggle is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism etc” — for a journal of women and social work; this too was accepted.

Describing themselves as “left-leaning liberals”, the hoaxers argued that vacuous grievance studies only discredited progressive causes. They said “the problem of corrupt scholarship has already leaked heavily into other fields like education, social work, media, psychology and sociology, among others … rapidly undermining the legitimacy and reputations of universities, skewing politics, drowning out needed conversations, and pushing the culture war to ever more toxic and existential (polarisation).”

The response of Boghossian’s university chiefs to this crisis? To pursue him for research misconduct, saying he failed to secure ethics approval before experimenting on hapless journal editors (which would have alerted them to the hoax). And, of course, he had not in truth carried out those canine genital inspections.

The disciplinary proceedings are a comment of sorts on the otherwise ignored results of this ethnographic hoax.

Some big names in academe have come to Boghossian’s defence, including Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, who said: “If (the university’s) committee of inquiry object to the very idea of satire as a form of creative expression, they should come out honestly and say so. But to pretend that this is a matter of publishing false data is so obviously ridiculous that one cannot help suspecting an ulterior motive.”

Portland State could borrow a tactic from the 1944 Ern Malley hoax, staged by two anti-modernist poets who threw together a body of work in a quiet afternoon with the help of a report on mosquito breeding grounds. A sample: “ ‘Swamps, marshes, borrow-pits and other / Areas of stagnant water serve /As breeding-grounds …’ Now / Have I found you, my Anopheles!” Critic Max Harris fell for it but always insisted his tormentors had unwittingly crafted poetry of real quality. Sure enough, the imaginary Malley became a fixture in anthologies and the poetry of his mortal creators has been relegated.

So don’t be too surprised if the “dog park” article turns up as a set text for your grandchildren.