Well, you have to hand it to them. After an outcry, Manchester University has now told Mr S that they’re investigating a PhD student who published a research paper in which he detailed how he masturbated for three months to extreme Japanese comics featuring young boys.
The saga started earlier today after Tory MP Neil O’Brien tweeted a link to an article in the journal Qualitative Research titled ‘I am not alone – we are all alone: Using masturbation as an ethnographic method in research on shota subculture in Japan.’ O’Brien noted that ‘the non-STEM side of higher education is just much too big, producing too much that is not sociallly useful.’ That’s putting it mildly…
PhD student Karl Andersson was researching subcultural Japanese comics at the University of Manchester but began masturbating after ‘hitting a wall’ in his studies. He started a three-month stint of masturbating to the same subject matter as his ‘research participants’ and make notes on each session. But his own thesis describes the material – known as shota – as a genre of self-published erotic comics that feature ‘young boy characters in a cute or, most often, sexually explicit way’.
Naturally after O’Brien and others raised concern about the research ethics underpinning Andersson’s ‘study’, Manchester was forced to belatedly intervene. A spokesman told Mr S:
The recent publication in Qualitative Research of the work of a student, now registered for a PhD, has raised significant concerns and complaints which we are taking very seriously.We are currently undertaking a detailed investigation into all aspects of their work, the processes around it and other questions raised. It is very important that we look at the issues in-depth. While that investigation is ongoing, it would not be appropriate for us to comment further at this time.
Talk about spaffing money up the wall. Just how on earth did this get approved?
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