
What an Audacious Hoax Reveals About Academia - zwieback
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/?single_page=true
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18134681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18134681)

~~~
mpweiher
And previous:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18127811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18127811)

~~~
dang
Thanks!

------
nostromo
This article doesn’t mention the most ridiculous example: Affilia, a women’s
studies journal, published a rewritten chapter from “Mein Kampf.”

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/fake-n...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/fake-
news-comes-to-academia-1538520950)

~~~
21
I think the most ridiculous example was the one where they advocated for
"privileged students" (ie: white men) to sit on the floor chained in classes
and not be allowed to speak, so that they can "experience reparations":

> _I wonder if that ‘progressive stack’ in the news could be written into a
> paper that says white males in college shouldn’t be allowed to speak in
> class (or have their emails answered by the instructor), and, for good
> measure, be asked to sit in the floor in chains so they can ‘experience
> reparations. That was our “Progressive Stack” paper. The answer seems to be
> yes, and feminist philosophy titan Hypatia has been surprisingly warm to
> it._

~~~
rubbingalcohol
That was mentioned in the Atlantic article, though they didn't mention that
the journal rejected it conditionally because the proposed "reparations" of
sitting chained on the floor and being spoken over weren't harsh enough for
privileged students -- the author was offered acceptance upon revision.

~~~
skrebbel
Source?

~~~
mistermann
Not proof, but more commentary:

[https://quillette.com/2018/10/01/the-grievance-studies-
scand...](https://quillette.com/2018/10/01/the-grievance-studies-scandal-five-
academics-respond/)

------
zwieback
Not surprising that these kind of things happen in social studies and it's
easy to make fun of.

However, lots of junk is also published in science and engineering, it's just
not as egregious and apparent.

~~~
daveFNbuck
There are much more egregious examples in computer science publishing. A paper
that just repeated the words "get me off your fucking mailing list" over and
over [1] was published in a journal. I also remember there being some
automatic paper generators that resulted in several publications several years
back. This is 100% an issue with bogus for-profit publishing, not with any
particular area of study.

[1]
[http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf](http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf)

~~~
nostromo
That’s not a fair comparison.

That’s not a peer reviewed journal — it’s a publication that will publish
anything for a fee.

All of the papers in the original article are peer reviewed.

~~~
daveFNbuck
The papers in the article were published in journals that will publish
anything for a fee. The "get me off your fucking mailing list" paper was also
peer reviewed. The reviewer asked for formatting changes and citations, very
similar to the reviews that these other hoax papers got.

~~~
xyzzyz
No, that’s completely incorrect. The papers in the article above were
published in top (or close to top) journals in their respective fields.

~~~
daveFNbuck
I have never seen someone claim that before. Can you back that up?

~~~
yorwba
"Gender, Place and Culture" (
[https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cgpc20/current](https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cgpc20/current)
) has an impact factor of 1.594. No idea whether that's enough to make it a
top journal in feminist geography or not.

The retraction notice for the "Dog Park" paper is currently the most recent
publication on that site.

~~~
daveFNbuck
That certainly contradicts what I've heard about these papers before. Gender,
Place and Culture does seem to be a top journal. Thanks.

------
bjt2n3904
A common response to this thread is "the review process must not have looked
closely enough".

This tweet[1] contains screenshots of the review process of the dog park
paper, and claims they received constructive feedback. As originally written,
the journal wouldn't publish it.

[https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview/status/104781375318043852...](https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview/status/1047813753180438528)

------
pdpi
Always fun to see that the Sokal Affair is reproducible science :).
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair))

Edit: Hah — interestingly enough, The Atlantic refers to this as "the new
Sokal Hoax" in the <title> tag and the URL, but as "an Audacious Hoax" in the
page proper.

------
charlysl
_Other means superior to the natural sciences exist to extract alternative
knowledges about stars and enriching astronomy ... incorporation of
mythological narratives and modern feminist analysis of them, feminist
interpretative dance (especially with regard to the movements of the stars and
their astrological significance), and direct application of feminist and
postcolonial discourses_

I cracked here.

------
perpetualcrayon
I think there are a number of variables that should be controlled for on
probably separate studies.

1) how likely can renowned academic get published with gibberish

2) compare #1 to how likely can an unknown get published with gibberish.

3) how likely can an unknown get a serious paper published when it was
actually the renowned academic who wrote it.

4) compare #3 to how likely a renowned academic can get a serious paper
published when it was actually the unknown / lesser known peer who wrote it.

------
VikingCoder
Journals are broken. A lot of people recognize that.

Peer review is also broken. A lot of people recognize that.

The fact that we don't publish negative results is a tragedy. We're losing so
much collective knowledge that way. We learn by failing, but somehow we're
ashamed to fail in public in academia.

I personally hope that arXiv and things like it keep taking off. And that we
end up funding respected people to review articles publicly. And that we end
up funding people to try to replicate interesting results, and publish their
findings.

And that the news media learns to explain to people what p scores are, and
what p-hacking is, and what the half-life of knowledge is, and that one new
research article with p=0.05 doesn't mean jack squat. Basically the news media
shouldn't cover leading research, it's just too noisy and it's difficult to
understand the context and relevance of new research.

~~~
schizoidboy
I think that's a good summary. My favorite relevant quote from Dr. John
Ioannidis:

> “Science is a noble endeavor, but it’s also a low-yield endeavor,” he says.
> “I’m not sure that more than a very small percentage of medical research is
> ever likely to lead to major improvements in clinical outcomes and quality
> of life. We should be very comfortable with that fact.”

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-
da...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-
and-medical-science/308269/)

------
epx
Social Sciences are the quintessential BS job generator. It serves a purpose
but not the one it thinks it does.

~~~
dmix
> It serves a purpose but not the one it thinks it does.

Pushing political agendas and keeping forever-students employed?

~~~
epx
Somewhere around that. There is an "Angst" in society, deep inside we all know
that there isn't a sunny place for everyone, while in the surface we pretend
we can do it like the Baby Boomers. Making people SJWing around dog rape is a
dummy load that keep them from demanding structural changes.

------
chippy
I am slightly cautious that this hoax is itself a hoax and no actual hoax
papers were published by actual academic journals.

~~~
21
Unless you don't consider "Gender, Place & Culture" an actual academic
journal, it did happen:

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2018.14...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1475346)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender,_Place_%26_Culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender,_Place_%26_Culture)

~~~
conception
Just as a comparison for folks - Gender, Place and Culture's impact factor is
about 1.

Nature, one of the most impactful, is 40.

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

------
scottlegrand2
I think anyone that was triggered by this experiment has self-identified
themselves as part of the problem.

------
SubiculumCode
Let us see some absolute gibberish paper get published in a solid SCIENCE
journal (e.g. Impact Factor > 5) before we all go "PEER REVIEW IS BROKEN
ARGHH!!"

------
apricot
Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/451/](https://xkcd.com/451/)

------
Eridrus
I think there is a real disconnect between what peer review is and what the
public seems to think peer review is.

The public seems to think that peer review indicates that something is true,
but that's clearly not the case because we have no way of verifying any of the
data used, etc.

The paper that got published in a top journal "Human Reaction to Rape Culture
and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon", while silly,
doesn't seem like it has to be rejected if it were an honest paper that
actually did the experiments they said they did. It seems no more silly than
the lobster nonsense Jordan Peterson peddles and conservatives eat up. I don't
personally think it's a useful paper, but most individual papers rarely are,
even in CS.

~~~
zhdc1
The methodology section of the article says that one person spent almost an
entire year sitting in a dog park for up to seven hours a day (for a total of
1,000 hours). During this time, that person allegedly inspected up to 10,000
dog genitalia, or approximately one every six minutes. Even if the alleged
institution was real (which it wasn't - they didn't even put up a website
until after the article was submitted), the author had valid credentials
(which they didn't), or someone knew of them personally (academia is a small
world) there were enough red flags that the reviewers should have questioned
the article's validity.

~~~
Eridrus
> Even if the alleged institution was real (which it wasn't - they didn't even
> put up a website until after the article was submitted), the author had
> valid credentials (which they didn't), or someone knew of them personally
> (academia is a small world)

Not sure about these journals, but a lot of peer review is blind, so the
reviewers do not have access to any of this information intentionally.

------
Blackthorn
Is there a full list of journals that published these?

This sort of hoax seems to happen every few years, but often to journals that
will explicitly accept anything and let anyone who wants to give a talk, so
long as it's related to the journal's mission (which means there's nothing
alarmist about it).

