
The Sokal Hoax - ekglimmer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
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tomlock
I think Sokal inadvertently provided the first in a wave of critiques of
academic publishing - not necessarily just of this specific "fashion" on the
left. We now know from numerous studies that even in scientific journals
publishing standards aren't as rigorous/objective as we'd like.

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ekglimmer
That's what I found interesting about this too, there is a whole rabbit-hole
of similar 'experiments' or what have you that people did after learning about
Sokal. Another wikipedia page is devoted entirely to scholarly publishing
stings
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_stings)).
They took place across all of academia, and like you say, end up proving that
even the scientific journals are not as rigorous as we may like or think.

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Nzen
tl;dr Alan Sokal, US based physics professor, convinced _Social Text_ , a
postmodern-focused academic journal, to publish a fraudulent article in 1995.
When appraised, the editors noted that they urged him to let them edit it, as
they considered it poorly written. Sokal argued their acquiescence, without
consulting another physicist, meant they were asleep at the wheel, despite the
discomfort.

~~~
ekglimmer
These publishing stings have occurred across many fields. I believe this is
just the most famous one:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_stings)

