Thursday, December 27, 2007

Stupidest Academic Research Ever

I agree with Rightwingprof on this one.

That’s right. Israeli soldiers are baaaaaad because they don’t rape women.

2 comments:

allenm said...

You'll be pleased to know "that the researcher had done a serious job, based on interviews with 25 soldiers and other accounts".

The obvious conclusion to be drawn, it turns out, is correct:

A research paper that won a Hebrew University teachers' committee prize finds that the lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose.
The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that the paper shows that "the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing [particular] political goals."


So it's an ed school doctoral candidate.

I see this as an academic call to arms. Israel may have surged ahead in the drive to explore the frontiers of speciousness and I for one won't stand for it. I believe American ed schools are capable of turning out research every bit as meritless as that turned out by any ed school anywhere in the world if not even more valueless.

The policy implications are a bit less then clear though. Does the report contain an implicit criticism for the failure to carry out enough rapes so as weaken the ethnic boundries and reduce the clarity of inter-ethnic differences? Does an insufficiency of rape indicate ethnic discrimination?

If, for instance, Canadian suicide-bombers blew themselves up in Israeli grocery stores and Canadian terrorists rained rockets on Israeli civilians, would IDF forces commit a more appropriate number of rapes since ethnic boundries and inter-ethnic differences would be a lesser deterrent? I believe there's a lot more research to be done and at least another dozen soldiers ought to be interviewed. In the interests of good scholarship.

Ellen K said...

You might enjoy today's post. Tongue in cheek, of course.
http://sumofallthingsaccording2me.blogspot.com/