inu-kun said:
I kinda doubt that academies are above that and as long as they don't reply (which they can do in an official capacity) there's no reason to believe the man is wrong.
Oh, academ
ics are not above it. Like people in any profession, academics ***** like champions. However, noone is going to come out "in an official capacity" and talk to the media because:
1) It's extremely unprofessional, and academics have actual careers which could be harmed by displaying any lack of professionalism.
2) Speaking "in an official capacity" would ultimately make no difference without institutional backing. If it helps, I can say that I'm speaking "in an official capacity" right now.
3) Everyone knows that trials by media are unfair. There are already internal disciplinary procedures for handling allegations of misconduct, but these are not matters for public discussion because the potential for misrepresentation or mudslinging is very high. The only people who will go to the media are people who think that they, personally, have something to gain from doing so. In other words, people who are not actually interested in finding out what happened or deciding whether it was appropriate so much as inciting public sympathy and promoting their own name.
4) It's bad media strategy. As it stands, all we have is one lone student crying unfair about a decision which didn't go their way. It blew over pretty fast. Dredging it up again weeks after the fact isn't going to convince anyone, it's just going to put the whole thing back into the public eye.
inu-kun said:
And if it was a point they made it's certinely should be criticized, like if I'd want to enlist there and get the answer that I can't:
1) Because I don't have good enough grades.
2) Because I'm a dirty jew.
Even if 1 is correct it is still an (in this case) antisemitic answer and deserve to be called out and explained.
Well, if you got that answer, then someone is probably going to lose their job. Universities have very, very strict anti-discrimination policies, far stricter than most employers (because of their role in dealing with young people). Hatespeech is also a crime, so you could also go to the police if you so wanted, although they will probably be less effective than just reporting the problem to the institution.
I mean, you
could call up your publicist straight away and go to the media with that, sure, but it would make no difference other than potentially prejudicing the internal or police investigation which would inevitably occur. Now, if you went through the internal investigation and at the end the institution did nothing or didn't go as far as you'd like (which has happened, I know a staff member who racially abused a student and kept their job - albeit with greater oversight and mandatory anti-racism training) then going to the media might be a good idea because at that point it is an institutional problem.
But running straight to the press is not even going to get you an explanation, because at that point there is nothing to explain. All they can tell you is that they're investigating.
inu-kun said:
Again, bring me the proof.
Proof of what. I'm describing basic generalisations about masters degrees and research and explaining how an ethics board things. I have a masters degree, I've taught masters students as a GTA, I know people who have served on ethics boards and I've even heard anecdotal stories of actual misconduct on the part of ethics boards (like male academics questioning whether someone can do a piece of research because they're a woman and they might be too emotionally fragile) so I'm not even ruling that out as a possibility. That's why we have internal oversight.
But Masters students do not have the training (or more importantly the time) to do a piece of research of the scope being described. Like, it is so out of line with the scope of what is possible for an MSc research project that I'm amazed I would have to explain this even to people without a background in research. It's PhD level research at least, and as mentioned PhDs take
years to complete and then months or years to edit for publication. Your MSc is not the place to change the world, and every year many, many students have to be talked down from trying to do Masters dissertations which are far too ambitious or impossible. The vast majority listen and take that on board, and in doing so they learn an important lesson about managing a piece of research.
Secondly, there are very clear and obvious ethical concerns with researching people who are emotionally vulnerable, and when noone wants to take part in your research because they're traumatized that kind of suggests it might be a valid concern.
Thirdly, yes there is a clear risk of damage to the institution. As mentioned, universities often take the risk of reputational damage on the chin when research is clearly important or making a contribution, but it's proportional to the ammount they get back. With a taught masters student, they get nothing back. Worse than nothing, in fact, because by letting them do a project which is utterly impossible within the timeframe they are setting that student up to fail, which also reflects badly on them.
inu-kun said:
I can bet you would have changed your tone if it wasn't aligned to your favour. Nobody is asking for full free speech (which is a strawman), but there is a sane limit to how far people can thought police and this is a case of it.
"Aligned to my favour". Lol, wut.
I have no objection to people doing case studies on people detransitioning. Ideally, those people should have some kind of background or long term commitment to studying trans issues more generally and a willingness to develop the requisite contextual knowledge. What's not acceptable to me, and actually kind of bullshit, is someone with no research experience deciding on the basis of a single conversation with a surgeon who has performed SRS reversals that detransitioning is some kind of escalating phenomenon which demands we overturn a best practice founded on decades of research into transgender people. True, on one hand I have a
political problem with that because it's recognisably dangerous, it's stigmatising to a very vulnerable community and dog whistling to people who want sticks to beat trans people with, hence why Caspian's academic defenders and "friends" are mostly conservative Jungians who think that trans people are delusional and TERFs who think that trans people are sexual deviants. However, my biggest problem with it is that it's just bad practice. It may meet the standard of free speech, but it doesn't meet the standard of accurate, complete and relevant speech, and speech which doesn't meet that standard has no place in an academic setting.
It took me 2.5 years before I knew what the conclusion of my research was going to be. Before that, I had a vague idea or hypothesis but I didn't have the knowledge to apply it as a direct claim and know that I could justify it every step of the way back. Deciding ahead of time that detransitioning is some kind of escalating threat which will blow our whole understanding of the medical ethics of treating transgender people out of the water is not exhibiting any kind of responsibility to the truth or the kind of restraint I would expect as a researcher (and bear in mind, in research terms I'm still a baby).
If I were to propose this piece of research, I would simply propose to investigate the self-perceived life histories of a small number of detransitioners (like, maybe two or three depending on the precise length of the project) with the goal of figuring out what
they feel led them to make a bad decision. From there, it should be easy to identify questionable factors in their treatment which might be worth following up in future research. Achievable within the timeframe, much less ethically risky, less blatantly politically motivated and consequentially less likely to call the institution into any kind of disrepute. It's not going to change the world and blow all our minds with radical mind bullets, but unless you're an established researcher with several published books you aren't going to regardless.
Part of why masters students are there is to learn how to properly frame and propose a piece of research. I just did it, because I have a masters and I learned a lot from doing one. Students who aren't willing to learn in this way are not going to do well.
inu-kun said:
They have the ability to respond, especially to what they did and did not say. All you do is engage in victim blaming.
Not really. There is nothing to respond to while the internal investigation is in progress.
And lol @ victim blaming. Sorry, but if being subject to procedure is victimhood, then I'm a victim too. I've gone through an ethics board. Heck, I had to spend a summer doing some pretty fundamental corrections after my upgrade viva before being approved. I didn't realize that muh free speech was being so cruelly trampled, otherwise maybe I would have gone to the media and got some free self-promotion out of it!