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New College, University of Oxford OX1 3BN, UK Professor Mark R McLellan Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies Portland State University 14th December 2018 Dear Professor McLellan Alleged Research Misconduct by Dr Peter Boghossian My first response on reading of the punitive investigation into Dr Peter Boghossian's brilliant hoax was to let out a howl of incredulous mirth. Do your humourless colleagues who brought this action want Portland State to become the laughing stock of the academic world? Or at least the world of serious scientific scholarship uncontaminated by pretentious charlatans of exactly the kind Dr Boghossian and his colleagues were satirising? For satire it was, and it is of the essence of satire that it is not literally true How would you react if you saw the following letter:- Dear Mr Orwell It has come to our notice that your novel, Animal Farm, attributes to pigs the ability to talk, and to walk on their hind legs, chanting "Four legs good, two legs better." This is directly counter to known zoological facts about the Family Suidae, and you are therefore arraigned on a charge of falsifying data Bad scientists who falsify data do so to gain advancement - to improve their list of publications, for example. But Boghossian and his colleagues openly publicised the fact that their papers were satirical and that the putative data were false. If the members of your 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. Could it be that somebody is gunning for Dr Boghossian for other reasons which they dare not admit? Of course I have not the smallest evidence for such a suggestion But don't you think it rather springs to mind, given that the accusation of falsifying data is so palpably absurd I suspect that you will probably agree and will have no difficulty in throwing out the accusation Yours sincerely Richard Dawkins FRS, DSc, Hon Dlitt, Hon DSc Emeritus Charles Simonyi Professor University of Oxford

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Richard Dawkins letter in support of Peter Boghossian


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Grievance Studies Hoax - Richard Dawkins letter in support of Peter Boghossian

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Uploaded Jan 08, 2019 at 03:10PM EST

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Grievance Studies Hoax

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peter boghossian, richard dawkins, portland state university

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