
Sokal Affair - diogofranco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
======
Pils
Whenever this is posted, I think this should be posted as well:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_h...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_hoaxes).
I feel there is a conspiratorial aspect to the anti-pomo movement, some sort
of vanguardism regarding what is and what isn't a valid form of academic
study. A conservative perspective on the values of postmodern thought
[http://reason.com/archives/1995/10/01/goodbye-true-
world](http://reason.com/archives/1995/10/01/goodbye-true-world).

~~~
jancsika
> I feel there is a conspiratorial aspect to the anti-pomo movement

Keep in mind that at least the Sokal prank wasn't an attack on pomo _per se_.
It was an inkling and subsequent confirmation that pomo editors could not tell
the difference between highly technical jargon that drives home a larger
theoretical point, on the one hand, and highly technical jargon engineered
specifically to serve no purpose whatsoever.

Imagine submitting a large patch to the Linux kernel that references various
files and line numbers but makes no additions or subtractions to any of those
files. If you could feed such a patch all the way up the chain and get Linus
to accept it, you'd have a pretty good argument that something is
fundamentally wrong with then intellectual endeavor of Linux kernel
development.

~~~
Pils
That is a fairly ridiculous argument. Many people try to portray the Sokal
Hoax as a broad indictment of the wide field of everything that is considered
"pomo," when really it is at most the indictment of a single journal. To say
all editors of all postmodern journals are unable to distinguish crock is an
insane extrapolation.

I feel a more apt metaphor for the Sokal Hoax is a security researcher
purposely submitting a backdoor to a random driver. If the commit gets
accepted, the failure is not a result of code review being a flawed process or
Linux itself being a failed project, but the driver maintainer who did not
catch the vulnerability. Even then, mistakes happen.

One can also put some of the burden of responsibility on the security
researcher herself, since code review/peer review is generally faulty when one
acts in bad faith. Similarly, the Sokal Hoax is a great example of bad faith
used to justify an ideological position through point scoring rather than
legitimate criticism.

~~~
jancsika
> Many people try to portray the Sokal Hoax as a broad indictment of the wide
> field of everything that is considered "pomo," when really it is at most the
> indictment of a single journal.

Well, the problem is "pomo" being such an ambiguous term for the two of us to
be likely talking at cross purposes.

There is an outstanding set of academic journal writing in the humanities
whose jargon includes casual references to the jargon of the hard/soft
sciences. By casual, I mean the relevance of the scientific jargon is left as
an exercise to the reader.

The implication in this writing is that the argument put forth is of such
profundity that nothing but the scientific concepts will do to elucidate it.

Sokal submitted an article to a journal full of that kind of writing. In his
article he removed the argument and left the referents. The editor didn't
notice. End of prank.

That is as legitimate a criticism of this journal as getting a fake journal to
accept an article written by a python script. It has nothing to do with point
scoring.

The prank extends to any other "pomo" journals, articles, and books which
utilize the same type of causual science jargon. Sokal wrote a book that gives
more examples of such writing.

------
QAPereo
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-
unfortunate-f...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-unfortunate-
fallout-of-campus-postmodernism/)

Seems very relevant, as another facet of this issue.

------
codeulike
Soon after this Sokal and Bricmont wrote a book called 'Fashionable Nonsense'
(titled Intellectual Impostures in the UK) in which they tackle Lacan, Deleuze
and Guatarri, etc. Its well worth a read.

From the wiki page about the book:

 _Sokal and Bricmont claim that they do not intend to analyze postmodernist
thought in general. Rather, they aim to draw attention to the abuse of
concepts from mathematics and physics, subjects they 've devoted their careers
to studying and teaching. Sokal and Bricmont define abuse of mathematics and
physics as:

\- Using scientific or pseudoscientific terminology without bothering much
about what these words mean.

\- Importing concepts from the natural sciences into the humanities without
the slightest justification, and without providing any rationale for their
use.

\- Displaying superficial erudition by shamelessly throwing around technical
terms where they are irrelevant, presumably to impress and intimidate the non-
specialist reader.

\- Manipulating words and phrases that are, in fact, meaningless.

\- Self-assurance on topics far beyond the competence of the author and
exploiting the prestige of science to give discourses a veneer of rigor._

------
hwayne
The editors' response:
[http://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/SocialText_reply_LF.pdf](http://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/SocialText_reply_LF.pdf)

------
voidhorse
Some people use this whole incident, which was an important one, as a support
for arguments that attempt to diminish the importance of the humanities, or
tout how 'the sciences' are superior. While I appreciate what Sokal did, I
think it leads many people to draw hasty and value-laden conclusions which are
otherwise unwarranted.

If anything the whole experiment points to the incommensurate nature (Kuhn) of
discourses and the multiple levels at which degrees of incommensurability can
occur.

The trendy and monistic nature of postmodern theories in the humanities is not
an issue that has been ignored within the humanities either, and furthermore
the problems of jargon, sycophantic behavior, and dogmatism that arise in the
application of postmodern theory are problems for (ostensibly) _all_ theories.
A literary theorist from Yale, Quigley, has an excellent book on this subject
and attempts to offer some means of resolution to the issues (see: Quigley
_Theoretical Inquiry_ ).

The sciences are slightly more immune because while they diverge they have a
shared ancestry and methodological base in mathematics (or, if you would, the
'scientific method' which is a highly problematic, over-general, and reductive
term).

The sciences are also plagued with issues in academia. For instance, negative
results, which are instrumentally important to the progression of science as
conceived in our current model of what constitutes the scientific, are pretty
much completely dissuaded and suppressed by the current academic apparatus--
positive discoveries, not elimination of hypotheses, are sexy--that's what
pulls in the money, that's what people want to read, but negative results that
help us further narrow the field of inquiry are just as important, if not more
so.

I think the whole Sokal thing was important--but I always think it's necessary
to bear the banner for the humanities to an extent when this is brought up, as
its easy to fall into notions that the humanities as an entire field of
inquiry is sort of baloney or shaky or unstable. It definitely _is_ unstable--
but that doesn't make it worthless or unimportant...I think postmodernist
theories and their application will probably go down in history as an
important transitional period away from structuralism and other forms of
analysis, but it's incredibly clear that they are not very sustainable means
of inquiry going forward.

------
jasode
The Sokal affair was a real-life "long con" version of XKCD #451.[1]

The farther you get away from STEM subjects, the easier it is to pass off
Poe's Law[2] on unsuspecting readers.

(That doesn't mean that social sciences, literature, and art have nothing
important to say.)

[1] [https://xkcd.com/451/](https://xkcd.com/451/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

