Investigation into PhD in Self-Stimulation

Soon after a British MP drew attention to what is being described as a “PhD in Masturbation”,  University of Manchester has confirmed launching an investigation.  As explained by ‘Mr. S’ in The Spectator:

Well, you have to hand it to them. After an outcry, Manchester University has now told Mr S that they’re investigating a PhD student who published a research paper in which he detailed how he masturbated for three months to extreme Japanese comics featuring young boys.

The saga started earlier today after Tory MP Neil O’Brien tweeted a link to an article in the journal Qualitative Research titled ‘I am not alone - we are all alone: Using masturbation as an ethnographic method in research on shota subculture in Japan.’

PhD student Karl Andersson was researching subcultural Japanese comics at the University of Manchester but began masturbating after ‘hitting a wall’ in his studies. He started a three-month stint of masturbating to the same subject matter as his ‘research participants’ and make notes on each session. But his own thesis describes the material - known as shota - as a genre of self-published erotic comics that feature ‘young boy characters in a cute or, most often, sexually explicit way’.