It's not just that they were published with "implausible "results. It's three things:
1. That they were published with obviously impossible results (inspecting the genitals of 10,000 dogs while asking owners about their sexuality).
2. It's where they were published. e.g. In the #1 "best" feminist journal Hypatia.
3. It's the evil in the messages they got published. They got a 3000-word except of Mein Kampf published, by rewording it in the language of intersectional theory. They got published recommending that "privileged" students be physically chained and silenced during class. They got published by proposing men be trained like animals. (This is not the same as learning about human behavior by studying dogs; it is to suggest that it's okay to treat people like dogs if they're born a certain way).
All this demonstrates a field of study that is not just soft in terms of intellectual rigor ("implausible"), but is willing to casually support reprehensible policy ideas if they're framed within a specific neo-Marxist belief system and targeted at men or white people.
Bear in mind that many of the people producing the papers in these fields receive public funds at public institutions. They project an image of being neutral scholars to justify those funds. What this hoax has done is given evidence that they are not neutral scholars. They are moralizers, activists, revolutionaries working to target a specific group of people, and are not very concerned about the rigor of the intellectual pathways they use to get there.
A group of people dedicated to a process are called scientists. A group of people dedicated to a conclusion is called a religion or an ideology. Social scientists claim to be the former. But the hoax papers demonstrated that, at least with some regularity and even in the highest journals, the social sciences act like the latter.
> (inspecting the genitals of 10,000 dogs while asking owners about their sexuality).
Why is that 'obviously impossible'? How long does it take to look at a dog's genitals, 5 minutes?
I haven't read the paper, but you could get a team of 10 undergrad (or grad) students, and send them out to different dog parks in the area. If each student inspects 20 dogs in a day (say they go to the park for a few hours--I assume many owners will say no) then you've got your data after 50 days of work.
Say your students are only free on weekends (when dog parks are likely more busy, anyway) then it'll take you a little more than six months to gather all your doggie-dick-data.
That's not at all an unreasonable length to run a study.
The paper does say this: "While I closely and respectfully examined the genitals of slightly fewer than ten thousand dogs, being careful not to cause alarm and moving away if any dog appeared uncomfortable...". The term "I" implies it was a single person doing all that. Elsewhere, it specifies that the total time spent observing dogs was 1000 hours.
Elsewhere: "From 10 June 2016, to 10 June 2017, I stationed myself on benches that were in central observational locations at three dog parks in Southeast Portland, Oregon. Observation sessions varied widely according to the day of the week and time of day. These, however, lasted a minimum of two and no more than 7 h and concluded by 7:30 pm (due to visibility)." It'd be an average of nearly 3 hours per day, every day.
Ok, so it's somewhat implausible for one person to look at this many dog-genitals, but it's certainly physically possible. How many animals does a veterinary see in a year?
Because you can't get 10 undergrad students to each put in 50 full days of work. Just can't be done.
I do hope you see that such a thing would not be a reasonable demand on these people. That's WAY too much. That's literally 1/5th of their entire school year.
Why not? When I review papers I am not trying to catch malicious authors. "This seems like an incredibly time consuming dataset to gather" is not a reasonable reason to reject. What is an honest author supposed to do in that situation? Collect less data?
The Hypatia article that got accepted was notoriously mild in comparison to many of the others, if you look at the summary:
> Thesis: That academic hoaxes or other forms of satirical or ironic critique of social justice scholarship are unethical, characterized by ignorance and rooted in a desire to preserve privilege.
This is obviously something that can be argued, even taking this very same project as an example! But for the authors to claim that the position is absurd begs the question in favor of their project. That looks disingenuous to me.
1. That they were published with obviously impossible results (inspecting the genitals of 10,000 dogs while asking owners about their sexuality).
2. It's where they were published. e.g. In the #1 "best" feminist journal Hypatia.
3. It's the evil in the messages they got published. They got a 3000-word except of Mein Kampf published, by rewording it in the language of intersectional theory. They got published recommending that "privileged" students be physically chained and silenced during class. They got published by proposing men be trained like animals. (This is not the same as learning about human behavior by studying dogs; it is to suggest that it's okay to treat people like dogs if they're born a certain way).
All this demonstrates a field of study that is not just soft in terms of intellectual rigor ("implausible"), but is willing to casually support reprehensible policy ideas if they're framed within a specific neo-Marxist belief system and targeted at men or white people.
Bear in mind that many of the people producing the papers in these fields receive public funds at public institutions. They project an image of being neutral scholars to justify those funds. What this hoax has done is given evidence that they are not neutral scholars. They are moralizers, activists, revolutionaries working to target a specific group of people, and are not very concerned about the rigor of the intellectual pathways they use to get there.
A group of people dedicated to a process are called scientists. A group of people dedicated to a conclusion is called a religion or an ideology. Social scientists claim to be the former. But the hoax papers demonstrated that, at least with some regularity and even in the highest journals, the social sciences act like the latter.