I've been following this on rm's journal. And word really should get passed around so these two researchers don't get the opportunity to pull this stunt again. (Because it sounds like they are planning to. If you read here and scroll down to the bottom of her entry where she copied the note from one of the researchers, he says "Eventually we're going to go through this all over again with the far right. It will be interesting to see who throws the meaner punch.")

It's been dubbed SurveyFail. Two researchers who claimed they were with Boston University devised a survey that dealt with slash in fan fiction. They had a misconcieved notion (that they were determined to relate to a study in neurochemicals) about it that was mysogenistic, homophobic, and very offensive, not to mention they withheld certain details (as in that the research wasn't through the university but for a book deal) and didn't properly screen out minors while asking very invasive questions or go through the BU review board -while claiming to be affiliated with them. And they set about to provide proof for their theory, while completely ignoring any arguments against, or any suggestions that they really didn't understand fan fiction (they referred to it as NetPorn in the title for their proposed book -while they referred to it as Fan Fiction or Slash in every other instance) while using it as their subject of study.

While I consider myself open to others opinions and beliefs, I really don't think the fan fic communities should be preyed upon like this. The two researchers seemed to believe that slash was ultimately not accepted by society and were trying to link it to sexual prejudices of theirs.


Articles discussing the whole incident

http://www.roughtheory.org/content/wearing-the-juice-a-case-study-in-research-implosion/

http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/SurveyFail