7 ms·

Apparently the university is accusing Boghossian of unethical research involving human subjects, and those human subjects are the journal editors who published

Apparently the university is accusing Boghossian of unethical research involving human subjects, and those human subjects are the journal editors who published the nonsense articles he submitted. It's one of the most transparent excuses for a witch hunt and rigged trial I've ever seen.

danieltillett 8y ago
You haven't looked much into the grievance studies area much then. The whole field is a gangrenous foot that will kill academia if something is not done about it.
- gumby 8y ago
  How will it kill academia? Will it suck up all the funding, starving other fields? If not, what damage can it do, any more than, say, topology could kill classics? This is a serious question, not a sarcastic one. Is this study area somehow affecting other academic disciplines? I'm long out of academia so this is all invisible to me.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    The concern, as I have often heard it repeated, is that by being so capricious, unbearable and aggressive, the personality type associated with "grievance studies" will ruin any social goodwill held towards academics, along with their reputation for being more right than the average person. If that were to happen, nobody would want to send their kids, tax money, or endowment fund donations to any universities, and the whole system would go away.
    - analog31 8y ago
      I actually don't think this is a new phenomenon, but an old one with evolving names and players. When I was a student 3+ decades ago, we called them "fluff courses." And my parents remember taking fluff courses too. We may have rolled our eyes, but in reality we were in on the game and had a vested interest in it, because the fluff courses were known to be an easy A. For one thing, a course that everybody in the college had to take, everybody had to pass. For another, teachers with a strong ideological agenda tended to be easy graders, because they wanted to be liked. So we sucked it up in those courses and were thankful for the boost to our GPA's. If you make every subject as rigorous as math or physics, the resulting workload will be crushing. And not everybody who gets a degree needs to be such a rigorous thinker, to make a valuable contribution to society.
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        >If you make every subject as rigorous as math or physics, the resulting workload will be crushing. And not everybody who gets a degree needs to be such a rigorous thinker, to make a valuable contribution to society. You could have a course that was neither rigorous nor ideologically biased, in fact every department could have them. I dream of an alternate universe (which one day could be ours) where instead of "You get an A but you have to pretend to agree with the professor 101," we could have, "the X department runs through their favorite material, but skips all of the really tedious parts that you would have to learn if you wanted to contribute, but as a spectator could go without."
        analog31 8y ago
        A lot of colleges have an option to "audit" a course. My own experience was that in spectator mode, I didn't really learn anything, because courses had a "learn by doing" aspect that was pretty valuable for me. Also, courses I was taking for a grade always got priority for study time.
        aaronblohowiak 8y ago
        At Drexel, they had “physics for designers”, which is roughly what you describe.
    - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
      >The concern, as I have often heard it repeated, is that by being so capricious, unbearable and aggressive, the personality type associated with "grievance studies" will ruin any social goodwill held towards academics, along with their reputation for being more right than the average person. This was William Buckley's theory in God and Man at Yale. Has the gangrene managed to advance since the 1940s without ever killing the patient?
  - mensetmanusman 8y ago
    Political support of universities is decreasing due to it, Pew has studied it.
    - gumby 8y ago
      That is quite interesting, and thanks for referencing Pew. The closest I could find was the one below [1] that says that Republican support for universities in the US is declining, and that the reasons were (in order) cost, "professors bringing their political and social views into the classroom" and "too much concern about protecting students from views they might find offensive" (the latter being closest). However study [2] suggests the difference might be more nuanced. Also, (though I am not in academia, my gf is and I spend a lot of time on campus): I'm not sure how much is really being "shut down" via complaints from so-called "grievance studies" faculty. The few cases that make the news seem so cause célèbre that I feel their very rarity is what makes them newsworthy. But then again I'm not a close observer. [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/26/most-americans-say-higher-ed-is-heading-in-wrong-direction-but-partisans-disagree-on-why/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/26/most-america... [2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/20/republicans-skeptical-of-colleges-impact-on-u-s-but-most-see-benefits-for-workforce-preparation/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/20/republicans-...
      - neltnerb 8y ago
        Interesting that the belief the professors are bringing their ideology into the classroom just shoots up as Republicans get older. Are they remembering their time in college? Maybe it was a bigger real thing in the 70s...
        jacobolus 8y ago
        I think it largely has to do with decades of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as news. Listen to Rush Limbaugh every day for a few years, and you start to believe him. Some older people become isolated from real-world social groups and get sucked into worrying about whatever radio or facebook feeds them. Which these days includes a lot of scary stories about universities coddling the next generation. These graphs all turn markedly during/after the 2016 election, when political discussion and dueling tribalist/ideological messaging has dominated media, a great deal of money and effort has gone into targeting online communities, etc.
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    It won’t kill academia but it may eventually lead to a large cut in academic funding or a determined effort to make a degree unnecessary for respectable middle class careers or both. Gender/Queer/Ethnic studies, cultural anthropology and sociology are overwhelmingly left wing. They are a branch of the academy and at the same time a sinecure for people who produce ideas useful to one side of the culture war. There’s no right wing equivalent, no department that is over 90% conservative where politics trumps the search for truth. And this isn’t something these people are trying to hide. They’re quite open about the primacy of their political mission. And the students who major on these subjects don’t learn any particularly useful skills. Eventually some Republican will run on turning state colleges into STEM, education and business places and gutting the humanities and social sciences. Once it happens one place it’ll be repeated. If half of the population sees universities as hostile to their beliefs and life why should they vote to continue funding them? https://newrepublic.com/article/143844/liberals-cant-ignore-rights-hatred-academia https://newrepublic.com/article/143844/liberals-cant-ignore-... > A Pew Research poll released this week found that 58 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents believe higher education has “a negative effect on the way things are going in the country,” versus just 19 percent of those on the left who say the same. While opinion on the left has remained fairly steady, on the right it has become decidedly more pessimistic over the past two years (in the accompanying graph, note the drastic shift after the poll taken in September 2015).
    - GridOps 8y ago
      >> "If half of the population sees universities as hostil to their beliefs and life why should they vote to continue funding them?" What is being said about universities could be said about a lot of things on the "progressive" left right now...
    - sho 8y ago
      > a determined effort to make a degree unnecessary for respectable middle class careers This would be welcome, frankly. There are so many careers for which a degree requirement is a gatekeeper, nothing else. Hell, many jobs advertise a requirement for any degree, with no particular preference, which tells you exactly how pertinent the content of the degree is to the job. As a society we've hyper-focussed on the desirability of university degrees at the expense of every other type of learning or training, and at immense cost. I'd welcome an honest re-appraisal of our priorities and an end to the creeping domination of credentialism.
dTal 8y ago
Technically, they have a valid point. This was an experiment on human subjects without their consent. I think this observation raises a further discussion about the gatekeeping, chilling effect of ethics boards. Scott Alexander describes his kafkaesque experience with them here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/
- microcolonel 8y ago
  The IRB should not be capable of learning about research conducted on them which amounts to a survey, before said research can commence. It produces an effective tyranny, where the only people who can validate the work of the affiliated institution are at the same time prohibited from doing so. In my humble opinion, I think the IRB process is backwards: researchers should determine whether their methodology is ethical (or within whatever other institutional regulations), and be tried only after a report is received, or an investigation is started. Not approaching the IRB alone should not be an offense.
  - saulrh 8y ago
    and be tried only after a report is received, or an investigation is started At that point it's too late to save the victims. Obviously unacceptable, right? (edit: got two posts backwards, sorry, fixed.)
    - samatman 8y ago
      Presumption of innocence is a foundation of law, at least in the United States. So yes, waiting until there is a victim to start a trial is a reasonable approach to scientific ethics. It may not be the best one, but it’s surely justifiable.
      - extra88 8y ago
        Only criminal law and there's no reason to think that standard should be applied in all situations beyond criminal law. The criminal standard is so high because the consequence of guilt is so high (including incarceration or even death) and because it's applied by the State.
daodedickinson 8y ago
And you surely couldn't trust administrators at Portland State to not give a secret warning to a publication when they're all part of the same scam.
- saulrh 8y ago
  Collaborate with a second lab at another institute. Get approval from one IRB to run the study against the other. Problem solved, everything aboveboard.
  - twblalock 8y ago
    > Collaborate with a second lab at another institute. Get approval from one IRB to run the study against the other. Problem solved, everything aboveboard. He would still get investigated for this. The university might need to find another reason, but they would certainly try.
theoh 8y ago
I don't know how familiar you are with research in the social sciences, but as wgerard's comment observes, this isn't a trumped-up charge. They could have done this without claiming that it was part of their university-affiliated research, and thus not fallen foul of ethical guidelines. But they published an official academic paper describing the stunt (afterwards) and claimed that it was a legitimate research project. They can't have it both ways: either it's a rogue hoax carried out outside of their day job, or it has to comply with the rules, which aren't onerous, but do require certain ethical standards to be met.
- gpm 8y ago
  Are university professors prohibited from submitting official academic papers outside of their university life? If so that sounds like a violation of the first amendment (when talking about state schools anyways). If not, what made this part of their university life?
  - wgerard 8y ago
    > If not, what made this part of their university life? The fact that he likely included his academic affiliation on any papers he wrote, likely used university resources to conduct or discuss some part of the research (e.g. meeting rooms, his office, his office phone), is an employee of the university, etc. I mean, come on - no IRB is going to let you claim a technicality like that. If you could skirt around research regulations by just claiming you were doing it "on your own" with no affiliation to the university, the IRB would be effectively pointless.
    - guitarbill 8y ago
      But they used pseudonyms, right? He didn't say "I'm Peter Boghossian with PSU". Anyway, what's shocking to me coming from Physics is how hard it is to read these papers from outside of academia (no arXiv even to at least see pre-prints). So I'm already more sympathetic to the hoaxers.
- twblalock 8y ago
Ar-Curunir 8y ago
IRB approval is a standard requirement for any research done when interacting with human test subjects. The researchers unquestionably didn't apply for IRB approval, and hence they're under scrutiny. No need to dream up conspiracy theories.
- paulsutter 8y ago
  For medical research, sure. He submitted fake articles to publications, he didn't perform medical experiments on the reviewers.
  - wgerard 8y ago
    > For medical research, sure. Behavioral research too (which this certainly is). Anything involving humans, pretty much.
    - paulsutter 8y ago
      What about journalists? Should they go through IRB approval before publishing a story?
      - wgerard 8y ago
        Are they performing research that receives support, directly or indirectly, from the United States federal government? If not, the answer is no, though you can read the federal regulations yourself to prove me wrong: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=83cd09e1c0f5c6937cd9d7513160fc3f&pitd=20180719&n=pt45.1.46&r=PART&ty=HTML https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=83cd09e1c0...
        paulsutter 8y ago
        The "grievance studies" papers were sponsored by the federal government?
        8y ago
sonderb 8y ago
Eh. I was a tenured professor who recently left my position because I got tired of the mind-numbing cacophany that academics has become. However... I think people may be reading into this too much, and overlooking the more obvious problem this points to, which is the typical IRB system in a university setting. The real scandal here is probably not anything about grievance studies or its pushback, but how it's even possible that the IRB can function in this way. Because, as someone who has seen all sorts of IRB investigations and feedback and discussions, this to me looks more like typical IRB behavior than anything about grievance study politics. To me this looks like a simple case where the IRB saw something about this study and decided that it was unreviewed human subjects study, and that as such, the investigator should be investigated. I've seen stuff like this before, and it has nothing to do with broader university politics, it's everything about Kafkaesque IRBs that now oversee every nanometer of university research. People seem to assume that IRBs are rational, and that the only reason this could be occurring is because the IRB is being leveraged to punish this professor for politically unpopular views. This could be possible, but to me this action is totally expectable given the IRBs I've seen. They're mindless, bureaucratic institutions that approach everything from a robotic literal interpretation of every guideline, with little to no regard for actual scientific ethics per se.
emmelaich 8y ago
Yep, it's creepy, Kafka-esque. McLellan and cohorts are saying they're not allowed to be mock ed.
gaius 8y ago
It was really the journals themselves who were the test subjects, not any specific named individuals. A journal is an institution, not a person.

danieltillett 8y ago

You haven't looked much into the grievance studies area much then. The whole field is a gangrenous foot that will kill academia if something is not done about it.

gumby 8y ago
How will it kill academia? Will it suck up all the funding, starving other fields? If not, what damage can it do, any more than, say, topology could kill classics? This is a serious question, not a sarcastic one. Is this study area somehow affecting other academic disciplines? I'm long out of academia so this is all invisible to me.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  The concern, as I have often heard it repeated, is that by being so capricious, unbearable and aggressive, the personality type associated with "grievance studies" will ruin any social goodwill held towards academics, along with their reputation for being more right than the average person. If that were to happen, nobody would want to send their kids, tax money, or endowment fund donations to any universities, and the whole system would go away.
  - analog31 8y ago
    I actually don't think this is a new phenomenon, but an old one with evolving names and players. When I was a student 3+ decades ago, we called them "fluff courses." And my parents remember taking fluff courses too. We may have rolled our eyes, but in reality we were in on the game and had a vested interest in it, because the fluff courses were known to be an easy A. For one thing, a course that everybody in the college had to take, everybody had to pass. For another, teachers with a strong ideological agenda tended to be easy graders, because they wanted to be liked. So we sucked it up in those courses and were thankful for the boost to our GPA's. If you make every subject as rigorous as math or physics, the resulting workload will be crushing. And not everybody who gets a degree needs to be such a rigorous thinker, to make a valuable contribution to society.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      >If you make every subject as rigorous as math or physics, the resulting workload will be crushing. And not everybody who gets a degree needs to be such a rigorous thinker, to make a valuable contribution to society. You could have a course that was neither rigorous nor ideologically biased, in fact every department could have them. I dream of an alternate universe (which one day could be ours) where instead of "You get an A but you have to pretend to agree with the professor 101," we could have, "the X department runs through their favorite material, but skips all of the really tedious parts that you would have to learn if you wanted to contribute, but as a spectator could go without."
      - analog31 8y ago
        A lot of colleges have an option to "audit" a course. My own experience was that in spectator mode, I didn't really learn anything, because courses had a "learn by doing" aspect that was pretty valuable for me. Also, courses I was taking for a grade always got priority for study time.
      - aaronblohowiak 8y ago
        At Drexel, they had “physics for designers”, which is roughly what you describe.
  - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
    >The concern, as I have often heard it repeated, is that by being so capricious, unbearable and aggressive, the personality type associated with "grievance studies" will ruin any social goodwill held towards academics, along with their reputation for being more right than the average person. This was William Buckley's theory in God and Man at Yale. Has the gangrene managed to advance since the 1940s without ever killing the patient?
- mensetmanusman 8y ago
  Political support of universities is decreasing due to it, Pew has studied it.
  - gumby 8y ago
    That is quite interesting, and thanks for referencing Pew. The closest I could find was the one below [1] that says that Republican support for universities in the US is declining, and that the reasons were (in order) cost, "professors bringing their political and social views into the classroom" and "too much concern about protecting students from views they might find offensive" (the latter being closest). However study [2] suggests the difference might be more nuanced. Also, (though I am not in academia, my gf is and I spend a lot of time on campus): I'm not sure how much is really being "shut down" via complaints from so-called "grievance studies" faculty. The few cases that make the news seem so cause célèbre that I feel their very rarity is what makes them newsworthy. But then again I'm not a close observer. [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/26/most-americans-say-higher-ed-is-heading-in-wrong-direction-but-partisans-disagree-on-why/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/26/most-america... [2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/20/republicans-skeptical-of-colleges-impact-on-u-s-but-most-see-benefits-for-workforce-preparation/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/20/republicans-...
    - neltnerb 8y ago
      Interesting that the belief the professors are bringing their ideology into the classroom just shoots up as Republicans get older. Are they remembering their time in college? Maybe it was a bigger real thing in the 70s...
      - jacobolus 8y ago
        I think it largely has to do with decades of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as news. Listen to Rush Limbaugh every day for a few years, and you start to believe him. Some older people become isolated from real-world social groups and get sucked into worrying about whatever radio or facebook feeds them. Which these days includes a lot of scary stories about universities coddling the next generation. These graphs all turn markedly during/after the 2016 election, when political discussion and dueling tribalist/ideological messaging has dominated media, a great deal of money and effort has gone into targeting online communities, etc.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  It won’t kill academia but it may eventually lead to a large cut in academic funding or a determined effort to make a degree unnecessary for respectable middle class careers or both. Gender/Queer/Ethnic studies, cultural anthropology and sociology are overwhelmingly left wing. They are a branch of the academy and at the same time a sinecure for people who produce ideas useful to one side of the culture war. There’s no right wing equivalent, no department that is over 90% conservative where politics trumps the search for truth. And this isn’t something these people are trying to hide. They’re quite open about the primacy of their political mission. And the students who major on these subjects don’t learn any particularly useful skills. Eventually some Republican will run on turning state colleges into STEM, education and business places and gutting the humanities and social sciences. Once it happens one place it’ll be repeated. If half of the population sees universities as hostile to their beliefs and life why should they vote to continue funding them? https://newrepublic.com/article/143844/liberals-cant-ignore-rights-hatred-academia https://newrepublic.com/article/143844/liberals-cant-ignore-... > A Pew Research poll released this week found that 58 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents believe higher education has “a negative effect on the way things are going in the country,” versus just 19 percent of those on the left who say the same. While opinion on the left has remained fairly steady, on the right it has become decidedly more pessimistic over the past two years (in the accompanying graph, note the drastic shift after the poll taken in September 2015).
  - GridOps 8y ago
    >> "If half of the population sees universities as hostil to their beliefs and life why should they vote to continue funding them?" What is being said about universities could be said about a lot of things on the "progressive" left right now...
  - sho 8y ago
    > a determined effort to make a degree unnecessary for respectable middle class careers This would be welcome, frankly. There are so many careers for which a degree requirement is a gatekeeper, nothing else. Hell, many jobs advertise a requirement for any degree, with no particular preference, which tells you exactly how pertinent the content of the degree is to the job. As a society we've hyper-focussed on the desirability of university degrees at the expense of every other type of learning or training, and at immense cost. I'd welcome an honest re-appraisal of our priorities and an end to the creeping domination of credentialism.

dTal 8y ago

Technically, they have a valid point. This was an experiment on human subjects without their consent. I think this observation raises a further discussion about the gatekeeping, chilling effect of ethics boards. Scott Alexander describes his kafkaesque experience with them here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/

microcolonel 8y ago
The IRB should not be capable of learning about research conducted on them which amounts to a survey, before said research can commence. It produces an effective tyranny, where the only people who can validate the work of the affiliated institution are at the same time prohibited from doing so. In my humble opinion, I think the IRB process is backwards: researchers should determine whether their methodology is ethical (or within whatever other institutional regulations), and be tried only after a report is received, or an investigation is started. Not approaching the IRB alone should not be an offense.
- saulrh 8y ago
  and be tried only after a report is received, or an investigation is started At that point it's too late to save the victims. Obviously unacceptable, right? (edit: got two posts backwards, sorry, fixed.)
  - samatman 8y ago
    Presumption of innocence is a foundation of law, at least in the United States. So yes, waiting until there is a victim to start a trial is a reasonable approach to scientific ethics. It may not be the best one, but it’s surely justifiable.
    - extra88 8y ago
      Only criminal law and there's no reason to think that standard should be applied in all situations beyond criminal law. The criminal standard is so high because the consequence of guilt is so high (including incarceration or even death) and because it's applied by the State.

daodedickinson 8y ago

And you surely couldn't trust administrators at Portland State to not give a secret warning to a publication when they're all part of the same scam.

saulrh 8y ago
Collaborate with a second lab at another institute. Get approval from one IRB to run the study against the other. Problem solved, everything aboveboard.
- twblalock 8y ago
  > Collaborate with a second lab at another institute. Get approval from one IRB to run the study against the other. Problem solved, everything aboveboard. He would still get investigated for this. The university might need to find another reason, but they would certainly try.

theoh 8y ago

I don't know how familiar you are with research in the social sciences, but as wgerard's comment observes, this isn't a trumped-up charge. They could have done this without claiming that it was part of their university-affiliated research, and thus not fallen foul of ethical guidelines. But they published an official academic paper describing the stunt (afterwards) and claimed that it was a legitimate research project. They can't have it both ways: either it's a rogue hoax carried out outside of their day job, or it has to comply with the rules, which aren't onerous, but do require certain ethical standards to be met.

gpm 8y ago
Are university professors prohibited from submitting official academic papers outside of their university life? If so that sounds like a violation of the first amendment (when talking about state schools anyways). If not, what made this part of their university life?
- wgerard 8y ago
  > If not, what made this part of their university life? The fact that he likely included his academic affiliation on any papers he wrote, likely used university resources to conduct or discuss some part of the research (e.g. meeting rooms, his office, his office phone), is an employee of the university, etc. I mean, come on - no IRB is going to let you claim a technicality like that. If you could skirt around research regulations by just claiming you were doing it "on your own" with no affiliation to the university, the IRB would be effectively pointless.
  - guitarbill 8y ago
    But they used pseudonyms, right? He didn't say "I'm Peter Boghossian with PSU". Anyway, what's shocking to me coming from Physics is how hard it is to read these papers from outside of academia (no arXiv even to at least see pre-prints). So I'm already more sympathetic to the hoaxers.
twblalock 8y ago

Ar-Curunir 8y ago

IRB approval is a standard requirement for any research done when interacting with human test subjects. The researchers unquestionably didn't apply for IRB approval, and hence they're under scrutiny. No need to dream up conspiracy theories.

paulsutter 8y ago
For medical research, sure. He submitted fake articles to publications, he didn't perform medical experiments on the reviewers.
- wgerard 8y ago
  > For medical research, sure. Behavioral research too (which this certainly is). Anything involving humans, pretty much.
  - paulsutter 8y ago
    What about journalists? Should they go through IRB approval before publishing a story?
    - wgerard 8y ago
      Are they performing research that receives support, directly or indirectly, from the United States federal government? If not, the answer is no, though you can read the federal regulations yourself to prove me wrong: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=83cd09e1c0f5c6937cd9d7513160fc3f&pitd=20180719&n=pt45.1.46&r=PART&ty=HTML https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=83cd09e1c0...
      - paulsutter 8y ago
        The "grievance studies" papers were sponsored by the federal government?
        8y ago

sonderb 8y ago

Eh. I was a tenured professor who recently left my position because I got tired of the mind-numbing cacophany that academics has become. However... I think people may be reading into this too much, and overlooking the more obvious problem this points to, which is the typical IRB system in a university setting. The real scandal here is probably not anything about grievance studies or its pushback, but how it's even possible that the IRB can function in this way. Because, as someone who has seen all sorts of IRB investigations and feedback and discussions, this to me looks more like typical IRB behavior than anything about grievance study politics. To me this looks like a simple case where the IRB saw something about this study and decided that it was unreviewed human subjects study, and that as such, the investigator should be investigated. I've seen stuff like this before, and it has nothing to do with broader university politics, it's everything about Kafkaesque IRBs that now oversee every nanometer of university research. People seem to assume that IRBs are rational, and that the only reason this could be occurring is because the IRB is being leveraged to punish this professor for politically unpopular views. This could be possible, but to me this action is totally expectable given the IRBs I've seen. They're mindless, bureaucratic institutions that approach everything from a robotic literal interpretation of every guideline, with little to no regard for actual scientific ethics per se.

emmelaich 8y ago

Yep, it's creepy, Kafka-esque. McLellan and cohorts are saying they're not allowed to be mock ed.

gaius 8y ago

It was really the journals themselves who were the test subjects, not any specific named individuals. A journal is an institution, not a person.