Greater Manchester Police have launched an investigation into a PhD student who used masturbation to erotic comics depicting young boys as a research method.

39 comments

  1. > Karl Andersson, a PhD student at the University of Manchester, sparked a public outcry after publishing a controversial article on “using masturbation as an ethnographic method in research on shota subculture in Japan” in the Sage journal Qualitative Research.

    Remember this the next time people tell you that questioning some of the ‘research’ going on at our universities is a Tory thing

  2. There are some very odd examples of self-immersive research e.g.

    [https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/18/ch-ch-ch-changes-academic-to-spend-year-as-david-bowies-many-personas](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/18/ch-ch-ch-changes-academic-to-spend-year-as-david-bowies-many-personas)

    “The levels of cocaine Bowie was consuming is not just illegal for a
    professor like myself, but it’s much too expensive – as well as
    unhealthy,” Brooker said. “So at the weekend I had a six-pack of energy
    drinks to try and simulate the experience of illegal substances,” he
    told the Guardian. “It made me very jumpy.”

  3. >It adds that the basis for the article published in the journal was a
    paper for the course, ‘**Topics in interdisciplinary queer studies:**
    **Autoethnography**’ at the University of Stavanger, Norway.

    If it’s ‘anti-intellectual’ to think this sounds like total bullshit, then I’m guilty as charged.

  4. The most prolific rapist ever in Britain Reynhard Sinaga was studying a phd in human geography. His thesis was titled Sexuality and everyday transnationalism among South Asian gay and bisexual men in Manchester.

  5. They at least need to give a computer a thorough search. If he is looking at drawn images then there is a reasonable chance he has been looking at other images ‘out of curiosity’.

  6. Private work, poorly conducted with no credible ethical guidelines. Nothing to do with his work at the uni. Potentially illegal – refer to police. Disciplinary proceedings under uni regs, specifically:

    d) the distribution or publication of a poster, notice, sign or any material which is offensive,intimidating, threatening, indecent or illegal, including the broadcasting and electronic distribution of such material;

  7. Holy fuck is his study weird. Linked below in case anyone is interested in reading it (there’s no images on the article)

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karl-Andersson-5/publication/360206602_I_am_not_alone_-_we_are_all_alone_Using_masturbation_as_an_ethnographic_method_in_research_on_shota_subculture_in_Japan/links/626832fcbca601538b6a91f1/I-am-not-alone-we-are-all-alone-Using-masturbation-as-an-ethnographic-method-in-research-on-shota-subculture-in-Japan.pdf?origin=publication_detail

    Some personal wtf excerpts:

    – This is how I set out to use masturbation as a method:
    – For a period of 3 months, I would masturbate only to shota comics. For this purpose, I
    would use d”ojinshi and commercial volumes that I have bought or been given during fieldwork in Japan. In short: I would masturbate in the same way that my research participants did it. After each masturbation session I would write down my thoughts and feelings – a kind of critical self-reflection – in a notebook, as well as details about which material I had used, where I had done it, at what time, and for how long.

    – I happened to live alone during this experiment, and I had newly become single after a long relationship – these factors probably contributed to my willingness and eagerness to explore this method.

    Kinda obvious lmao

    There’s too many weird as fuck things to list. I just physically can’t imagine the kind of person who’d write something like this and then go “Yea, that seems like what a rational and normal person would do – Keep a diary and imagine childhood fantasies of having sex with my friends”

  9. how did this get through a university ethics process? presumably someone at the university read and approved an ethics application for the study itself?

  11. This sounds about as plausible as when people who get busted by pedo hunters claim they were just trying to warn kids about the dangers of meeting up with strangers from the internet.

  16. Honestly I do think this a valid topic of research.

    It’s something I’ve seen queried before – do comics that don’t involve any actual kids being hurt help give paedophiles a harmless outlet or merely encourage them along so they are more likely to hurt kids.

    I’ve not seen any answer one way or the other, I’m not familiar with any studies into it. But it does seem something it would be great to have a definitive answer on as it would help to protect kids.

    But the methods here….

    1: Squick.

    2: Holy unscientific nonsense batman.

  17. As PHD is approved, you work with a advisor or tutor anf theirs various formal steps that somthing this out their would not be an formal topic for a supported PHD.

    This is whatever crazy they did on their own time.

    The article is clear this was not on University, and would not of passed their standards.

  18. As someone doing a PhD and auto-ethnography type stuff (with videogaming not wanking), this fucks me off more than most

    How the fuck something like this got published I’ll never know

  23. >*”After the paper stirred controversy online, numerous people flagged up previous controversial work by Andersson, including his time running a magazine that published sexualised images of young boys”*

    **Yep, he’s indefensible.**

    I had heard of an odd experiment by a someone at Stanford (now a very prominent investor), where he ran through the campus screaming homophobic expletives.

    Ironically, he came out as gay many years later.

    I’m afraid as to what this author would come out about this author.

    Society has a lot of reflection to do about the issue of pedophilia and we need to ask ourselves what is acceptable and what isn’t.

    But publishing sexualized images of kids *and* doing this is just not okay. He needs serious help before he harms someone. Hopefully he hasn’t already.

  24. > The University of Manchester added that the described research methodology and data collection for the study were not submitted to the institution for ethics approval and that the paper was not part of his supervised PhD programme of study.

    > Although Andersson was registered for a PhD at the university, it said the research design which he proposed for conducting the research for his PhD was rejected by the University Research Ethics Committee on 17 June 2022.

    wasn’t the initial hook of this story some kinda “academia gone mad, look at the bullshit they’re funding” angle? don’t remember this detail being widely published!

  25. I’ve read this multiple times and I’m still not entirely sure what he was trying to find out, could someone explain?

    It just seems like he just wanted to wank to young boys and felt the need to publish that fact.

  30. If you haven’t read the Vice interview this guy a few years back about his magazine that published sexualised images of underage boys, it confirms that A. He’s definitely into underage boys and B. He’s an edgelord who says “I’m just asking tough questions about our society” to justify producing paedophilic images.

  31. What I don’t understand is how this was accepted by peer review. It’s essentially just a weird bloke’s diary about wanking to cartoon boys (I’ve read the paper), what self respecting academic would have read that and said “hmm yeah this is beneficial to the field”??? It boggles the mind, and goes to show that some academic disciplines aren’t as respectable as others IMO. Because what benefit is there to wider society or anybody other than this bloke, from this paper?!

  32. Christ even the way it’s written is awful. I know that’s kinda not the point, but this opening paragraph

    > Introduction
    > I had hit a wall in my research. Semi-structured interviews (Bernard, 2006) can only take
    you so far, especially when the topic is sensitive (Lee, 1993), which mine is. A short
    introduction is called for before we move on.

    Reads like shit and references something from from almost 30 years ago to make the point of “the topic is sensitive”

  33. Money well spent. Fuck investigating the shenanigans at Number 10… Or the hawking of prices! This is where it’s at! Investigating masturbation to comic books.

  34. Where was his supervisor when he was coming up with this totally personal methodology?

    It adds nothing to record the feelings of one person. This isn’t a study or experiment, it yields no significant results. Most generously it’s a terrible art project, not research.

  35. So, when are the Tories who are always banging on about “academic freedom” and “free speech on campuses” going to come out in his defence?

  37. Did the guy not know those things are illegal here? Have been since 2009, if he did not then clearly he didn’t do very good research, if he did then I just don’t understand why he’d intentionally get himself sent to prison for it.

  39. Is it fair to ask why the taxpayer has to fund degrees like this?

    Rishi Sunak I think recently suggested that university funding should be prioritized for economic growth, and as usual people started throwing a fit about Tories “damaging” the Arts. But then you get wanky degrees like this and you realize he has a point.

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