A reader (who is a well-established philosopher) writes in with a rather odd case:
A question, which I'd prefer you ask anonymously:
What should you do if you find your work being cited in [BS] dissertations?
The situation: I was feeling vain the other day, so I looked up my google scholar profile and saw that a couple of my papers had some new citations. So I went looking for where they were cited.
What I found was a series of 'dissertations' that all cited my papers. I put 'dissertations' in quotes because they were, at best, jumbled collections of something just barely above word-salad. All of these dissertations came from the same [non-philosophy grad] program, all of them having some permutation of the same three faculty members as a committee.
And they're just gibberish. Incoherently constructed, hundreds of pages long, they're nothing but long strings of vaguely sentence-shaped arrangements of words that never quite rise to the level of meaningfulness.
What should I do? I'm lazy by nature, so my instinct is to ignore it. But I also feel like there's something sinister about this that I really don't *want* to ignore. On the other hand, I have no idea who to contact.
In general, I'm inclined to think that the standards of different academic disciplines are so heterogeneous that one should tend to 'let things go.' I mean, there are entire fields I've come across that seem to me (as a philosopher) to use 'nonsense methods.' While I actually think there is something deeply problematic about such fields, I don't think it's my place to 'contact anyone about it.' Rather, it seems to me that the thing to do is to argue in print that the methods in the fields in question are problematic–that or engage in something like the Sokal Hoax to display how problematic the relevant fields are (though this kind of stuff can get you in a lot of trouble if you're not careful).
However, the case the reader wrote in about seems like it may not just be 'weird disciplinary standards' but rather something more nefarious: an entire department illegitimately conferring higher degrees on students who write 'dissertations' that don't meet even the most basic standards of scholarship. If that's what's going on, it seems to me a case of academic misconduct. How should it be dealt with? I guess my first suggestion would be to approach your own department chair or dean, telling them that you have serious concerns about what is going on at another university. I think this is probably a prudent case of action for two reasons: (1) if your chair or dean decides to act upon the complaint themselves, it may have more effect than if you (a random faculty member did it), and (2) your dean or chair might appreciate knowing in advance if you plan to pursue the issue yourself. After this step, though, I'm not sure. Should one contact the chair of the department in question to express one's concerns? Should one contact their dean? As I've never raised complaints of any sort, I'm really not sure.
What do you all think should be done here, if anything? I realize it is a very odd case, but I have to confess I'm curious to hear people's thoughts.
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