A peer-reviewed article based on masturbation to paedophilic comics as an autoethnographic method has rightly sparked condemnation within and beyond academia.
The article by Karl Andersson, a University of Manchester PhD student, has now been removed from Qualitative Research’s website. Its ethical failings have already been scrutinised by journalists and academics. But a key question remains outstanding: how has qualitative research, ostensibly under the banner of anthropology, got to the point where something like this could even be considered scholarship in the first place?
