
Academic Drivel Report: Confessing my sins and exposing my academic hoax - apsec112
http://prospect.org/article/academic-drivel-report
======
dragandj
This reminds me to kick in with my own achievement: Three years ago I
published a hoax article that was accepted _and published_ in one of Thomson
Reuters indexed journals.

For a good laugh, take a look at the copy freely available here:
[https://www.scribd.com/doc/167706815/EVALUATION-OF-
TRANSFORM...](https://www.scribd.com/doc/167706815/EVALUATION-OF-
TRANSFORMATIVE-HERMENEUTIC-HEURISTICS-FOR-PROCESSING-RANDOM-DATA)

I wrote a serious analysis of that hoax (including motivation) and published
it in a proper journal. Unfortenately, it is behind a paywall, but that is
what sci-hub.io is for: [http://link.springer.com.sci-
hub.io/article/10.1007/s11948-0...](http://link.springer.com.sci-
hub.io/article/10.1007/s11948-014-9521-4)

~~~
elliotec
My favorite part is the pictures.

~~~
dragandj
Damn youngsters! Nobody reads the text anymore...

------
p4wnc6
If the true purpose of academic hierarchy is for wealthy elites to compete
through the status of affiliation, especially with whomever has the most
fashionable, progressive opinions and presents them in the most esoteric and
obfuscated way yet can still have others call it "art," then most of the bad
behavior of this post seems to just be rational business on the part of the
academics.

As much as we like to _talk_ about rewarding academics for actually making
breakthroughs that have positive effects in the lives of most others, that is
all just talk. Want we really want is to collect academics like they are
elusive Pokemon cards ... the more obscure their abilities, the better, as
long as they can be plausibly connected to whatever cause, regime, or attitude
is favored in the in-group where that academic's works wield influence.

~~~
carbocation
As an academic trainee in the life sciences, I am curious to know if you are
positing this question across all disciplines.

~~~
p4wnc6
My personal belief is that it is a significant effect across all disciplines,
but that the objective nature of some disciplines offers occasional ways to
combat it.

My own academia experiences were in machine learning and image processing, and
even there it was a heavy competition for demo ware. All ideas were basically
vetted for their plausibility of leading to a TED talk or a conference keynote
demo. If you proposed something or showed passion for something, but it wasn't
clear that you could talk it about it while wearing a black turtleneck, then
it got rejected pretty quickly. Little if any time was ever given to whether
the fundamental questions were good ones or whether their answers constituted
value-adding directions for humanity to move in. And don't even get me started
on teaching. I once got yelled at by an adviser because I spent the time to
write up my recitation notes for my probability students in TeX, instead of
just scanning my unreadable hand-written notes. Good luck convincing them that
investing time into _how_ to teach something is worthwhile.

The process of moving past qualifying exams did include some objective hurdles
of study (sort of quality control for the university's or department's brand)
but it largely consisted of convincing certain key status figures that you
were On Their Team and would be a good spokesperson for the sorts of positions
and ideas they most wanted to affiliate with.

It will surely vary by discipline, geography, political climate, etc. But I
think this is the dominant reason why we have academics at all. I do not think
that the well-worn stories about funding fundamental research for society's
benefit are even remotely true.

~~~
lvs
I can assure you that many others are toiling away in areas that could not
plausibly lead to a TED talk. It's not all show-and-tell prestidigitation, but
some areas are heavier in that regard than others -- like machine learning,
for instance.

Your response is rational, however, in its critique of many fields and forums.
I'd like you not, however, to denigrate the incredible sacrifices being made
by researchers in all fields of study. Of course, the snake-oil rules the day
at the moment, but those are just the most vocal and observable of workers,
and they cast the rest in an unfortunate and undeserved light. The startup
world, in many ways, shares a large responsibility for this perniciousness, as
institutions all vie with press releases for investment and donation money
more now than ever before with the goal of reaping short-term profits in the
marketplace.

~~~
p4wnc6
While some fields have higher-end media outlets like TED talks or
infotainment-style demoware, or like Richard Thaler's role in the recent movie
_The Big Short_ , other fields might have less sensationalist outlets like a
Senate subcommittee hearing, a scientific press release, or inclusion in a
documentary film or important literary outlet -- and any of these can lead to
follow-on speaking engagements or invitations as an academic adviser or
dignitary in various circumstances. And even in the case of Senate hearings,
it's often _not_ about accuracy or objectivity, but instead about Supporting
The Correct Team.

The point is not what is the maximum media exposure of a given field. The
point is that in _any_ field, there is a small elite class who mostly controls
(as cultural gatekeepers) the ability for lower-status and aspiring
researchers to advance, much like party politics. They form networks of
editorial boards, committees for awarding tenure, and have nebulous
connections through upper management of academia, corporate boards,
endowments, politics, and celebrities. Yes it can vary by field, but you see
the same pattern either at a big scale or a smaller scale.

I certainly believe many researchers enter the research profession with pure
motives. But it is the ones who quickly learn to sublimate their desire for
intellectually rigorous research and social betterment in favor of political
skills who naturally rise to the gatekeeper positions.

Sadly, the pure and highly impressive research labor of a lot of these lower-
status academics is just pure waste. I don't mean to denigrate the academics
for this -- their motives are pure; they are just operating in a rigged system
where the only means to significant success is to "wise up" and realize that
the best "product" you can provide is to sort of auction off the ability to
affiliate with you by sublimating yourself to someone's coalition in exchange
for resources and notoriety provided by that coalition.

~~~
jnbiche
> it is the ones who quickly learn to sublimate their desire for
> intellectually rigorous research and social betterment in favor of political
> skills who naturally rise to the gatekeeper positions.

Nevermind just academia. Sadly, what you've just described neatly sums up
modern work life in most _organizations_ (companies, non-profits, open source,
etc.) that I've been a part of.

Startups may sometimes be an exception to this rule, but they often come with
their own set of problems (frat house atmosphere, ageism, zero diversity,
expectations of 80+ hour weeks, etc.).

------
conistonwater
> _I assume the panel was successful, although I never heard from the
> organizer or any of the other panelists inquiring why I didn’t make it._

It would be interesting to know what the organizers themselves thought of the
abstract, because the editors' response to the Sokal article was quite amazing
[1, 2].

[1]
[http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/SocialText_reply_LF.pdf](http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/SocialText_reply_LF.pdf)

[2]
[http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/reply.html](http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/reply.html)

~~~
avs733
I've read about this incident before, and as someone who transitioned from the
'hard' sciences (specifically semiconductor engineering) to the 'soft' or
social sciences (specifically education and economics) it has been a bit
disquieting.

First, for Dr. Sokal, I am a bit...bemused or surprised I guess I would
say...at what seems like a quite childish simplification and overall process.
This was not a peer review journal, as is implied in most coverage of the
incident. Further, I strongly suspect (as I have seen from my former
colleagues when I discuss my new field with them) Sokal showed an enormous
amount of hubris (as Robbins and Ross note "What Sokal’s confession most
altered was our perception of his own good faith as a self-declared
leftist...On the other hand, we recognize that professional scientists like
Sokal do feel that their beliefs and their intellectual integrity are
threatened by the diverse work done in the field of science studies"). To
attempt to speak ill of a field you know little about and yet still find to be
trivial or unrigorous is puzzilingly tactless and embarrassingly presumptuous.
It is a bit as if Sokal found himself laughing at the naked emperor, unaware
that it was a mirror.

Second, I have always wondered what about what this incident, and its
references, says about other disciplines understanding and approach to social
sciences and fields like philosophy and psychology. We tend to have a natural
search for truth as scientists...one of the fundamental questions though is
what is meant by truth and, further, what is the interrelationship between a
truth and the context in which it is observed? Engineering colleagues I have
look at the fact that things are rethought, changed, dismissed, in conflict,
can't be confirmed, etc. is seen as a flaw whereas I see it a reality. Much of
the social sciences is closer to the quantum domain. True social experiments
are difficult or legally/ethically untennable. When they are conducted, they
are often conducted in ways that try to minimize outside variables...but
reality isn't that simple. Human beings don't share a universal 'ground state'
from which decisions or behaviors emminate.

~~~
jules
This is symptomatic of the postmodernist nonsense that Sokal pointed out.

1\. Politicising what ought to be science: "What Sokal’s confession most
altered was our perception of his own good faith as a self-declared leftist".

2\. Claiming that people outside the field are unable to understand that it's
drivel: "To attempt to speak ill of a field you know little about and yet
still find to be trivial or unrigorous is puzzilingly tactless and
embarrassingly presumptuous".

3\. Pulling up the smoke screen that truth is subjective: "We tend to have a
natural search for truth as scientists...one of the fundamental questions
though is what is meant by truth and, further, what is the interrelationship
between a truth and the context in which it is observed?"

4\. Using scientific terms in a nonsensical way: "the social sciences is
closer to the quantum domain"

Postmodernism is a blight upon the human intellect that is not only destroying
the social sciences but increasingly also politics.

~~~
dahart
I have no love for postmodernism, but this seems at least mildly unfair.
Sokal's initiating action was entirely political. Responding by saying that
Sokal hurt himself more than anyone else is a decent strategy, and might be
true too, but it's not a symptom of postmodernism.

Claiming that people outside a field don't understand is a symptom of
academics, and of most groups of humans, but it is not something in any way
unique to postmodernism.

~~~
mcguire
Further, claiming that any field you don't understand is worthless gibberish
is also pretty common.

~~~
Crito
Claiming it with the rigor that Sokal has is not common.

------
PaulHoule
There is always going to be a fringe where bad papers get published and bad
conference admissions accepted. Regularly the CS colloquem gets speakers who
do not know what they are talking about and should not be there.

The CS people are really polite, the only people who will ask them hard
questions are the refugees from the physics department. Even though we are not
speaking terms anymore sometimes I team up with the meanest physicist in the
world to methodically disassemble such a speaker like two crabs on a starfish.

Your story shares a lot with the "imposter syndrome" in that you are failing
to internalize the achievement because it is fake, you are a fake, etc.

L Ron Hubbard wrote some crazy books and managed to wreck the lives of
millions. Donald Trump could be president. There are far worse scandals than
anything here

------
huj123
Reminds me of a winner of the World’s Worst Sentence award:

>"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to
structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony
in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and
rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of
structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes
structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into
the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of
hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the
rearticulation of power."

~~~
danieltillett
Can you translate this for me? What in the hell is this about?

~~~
curveship
Sure. This is actually a pretty standard summary of the shift away from
structuralist social theories.

Social structures tend to be pretty stable: the same people and forces stay in
power for a while. How should we think about that stability?

One way is to imagine that society is like a building: a solid structure that
preserves those people and forces in power. It's stable because it's rigid,
and time doesn't affect it much.

But there's a second option. Think of a standing wave in a river, like the
kind that whitewater kayakers like to surf on: it's not rigid at all, but it's
still "stable," welling up continually at the same spot.

So is our society structured like a building, or like a standing wave?

If we go with the standing wave idea, that brings up a lot of new questions.
We start wondering about dynamics, flow and motion. We also start wondering
about the river bottom: is there a big rock under there causing the wave, or
does it just happen to emerge from the otherwise random arrangement of smaller
rocks?

~~~
Crito
2000 years on, and we are still arguing over the _Ship of Theseus_

------
TheOtherHobbes
I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice that not turning up was the perfect
way to deliver a talk "On the Absence of Absences."

~~~
emmelaich
Yes, I loved this quote:

    
    
        I even allowed myself to ponder the possibility
        that all of them were absent

------
justifier
i commented on the scihub article(o) posted earlier today by suggesting a
possible solution to the issues that research publication is facing right now

the idea is to build a marketplace for peer review around an open publication,
alike arxiv.org, that confers reputation and encourages multiple reviews

if a person hires a peer reviewer to review their work or someone else's, but
you are skeptical of the review, you can hire a reviewer that you respect to
do an independent review, one which could uphold or dispute the original
review, or even illuminate some further clarification

such a community would address the issue of these 'hoax' and convoluted papers
directly

(o)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177957)

------
mrharrison
A lot of this could be due to a poor diet. The author or anybody in a similar
situation should look into this as well. Eat less carbs to avoid insulin
swings, etc. It's amazing how a better diet can affect your mood.

------
jkyle
It's a Glass Bead Game. [1] One of my favorites.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game)

------
pervycreeper
Here's a direct link to Sokal's original paper, which is an incredibly amusing
read if you get his references:
[http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2...](http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html)

~~~
Crito
If anyone is only familar with Sokal for his _Social Text_ hoax, you owe it to
yourself to check out his book _Fashionable Nonsense_ (originally published in
French as _Impostures Intellectuelles_ ).

While Sokal's hoax exposed inadequacies in _Social Text_ (and similar
journals), his book is _far_ more damning. In it he exposes numerous French
philosophers/'intellectuals' for the misuse and abuse of scientific and
mathematic concepts and terms to obscure the meaning of their texts. The
examples he presents range from plausibly the consequence of well-meaning
ignorance, to inexcusable outright quackery. Some of his examples may seem
like pedantic nitpicking of flowery poetic language, but much of it is truly
damning.

Excerpt from the introduction:

> Some readers will no doubt think that we are taking these texts too
> seriously. That is true, in some sense. But since these texts _are_ taken
> seriously by many people, we think that they deserve to be analyzed with the
> greatest rigor. In some cases we have quoted rather long passages, at the
> risk of boring the reader, in order to show that we have not misrepresented
> the meaning of the text by pulling sentences out of context.

------
peter303
The tech world is not immune from such drivel too. YCombinator is likely
inudated with half baked startup ideas, a copy of a copy of an existing app,
or a group of 20-somethings trying to slve another trivial problem of
20-something existance.

------
rectang
Chicken chicken chicken chicken, chicken chicken chicken chicken _chicken_
chicken chickens.

[https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf](https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf)

~~~
teddyh
Chicken:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk)

------
aaronbrethorst
This reminds me of Neal Stephenson's description of "War as Text" in
"Cryptonomicon" just a bit too much.

------
pcrh
TIL "agnotology", "the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology)

------
musgrove
"I not only wanted to see if I could fool the panel organizers and get my
paper accepted, I also wanted to pull the curtain on the absurd pretentions of
some segments of academic life."

He really should have added "...within my sociology department." He has a high
opinion of himself if he thinks he can speak for academia in its entirety.
Also, obviously this guy takes his academic reputation, job and profession not
seriously at all:

~~~
vixen99
No, not obvious at all. If you took the trouble to confront the points he
makes instead of hand waving you might have something to contribute to this
discussion.

"<<Most>> of their attacks are off-base, but there is a <<grain of truth>> in
their claims. Academics who believe in the mission of higher
education—teaching, research, and public service—need to defend academic
freedom, but <<some>> of our colleagues have to clean up their acts, because
it is difficult to defend the indefensible."

