User:LBird BASc/sandbox/ATK/Seminar6/Truth/Study Hoaxes in the Humanities

The Sokal Affair

Alan Sokal

Alan Sokal sent an article called "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" to The Social Text, where he argued that gravity was a social construct. His aim was to see if a cultural journal would publish an article with false content if it "sounded good" and resonated with the ideologies of the editors. The article was published in 1996, after which Sokal revealed that it was a hoax. The article had not been peer reviewed prior to publication, and both the maths and arguments used were clearly faulty.

The co-editors of The Social Text later published a response explaining why they published the article. They wanted to encourage a physical scientist engaging with philosophy, and considered the article in good faith. As a social journal, they did not have access to the peer-reviewers an established science journal would have. Sokal also did not make any of the amendments the editors asked him to make.

Grievance Studies (also known as Sokal Squared)

Summary of the studies

The Grievance Studies affair was a series of academic papers, that three academics wrote in an attempt to discredit the results and findings of several academic disciplines they described as grievance studies. The chosen areas were in cultural, queer, race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies and the series of hoax papers aimed to highlight a bias in the conclusions of the 'post-structuralist' way of thinking in these areas. The authors were Helen Pluckrose (a writer and researcher for a magazine), James Lindsay (a mathematician ) and Peter Boghossian (a philosopher at Portland State University. The attempt took place between 2017 and 2018 and in reference to the earlier, but similar hoax by Alan Sokal is often referred to as Sokal Squared.

The series of papers took place after a previous hoax attempt by Lindsay and Boghossian about the penis being a social concept, but it was not well received due it being published in a 'pay-to-publish' journal (Cogent Social Studies). Because this was a low tier journal the results were dismissed and for the later attempts they only applied to much more reputable peer reviewed journals, in order to gain more reputable results.

Method of the Hoax

The papers were written to be "outlandish or intentionally broken in significant ways", but come to a conclusion in line with with a political ideology in theses fields. They were hoping that if they were published they could highlight a bias if the results were favourable to their political dispositions. They wrote on their report of the hoax that "each paper began with something absurd or deeply unethical (or both) that we wanted to forward or conclude. We then made the existing peer-reviewed literature do our bidding in the attempt to get published in the academic canon."

They would submit the papers to a journal and if it was rejected, would make the amendments recommended and submit it to another.

Initially there was not much success for their papers, they believed because they seemed out of place amongst papers actually written by experts in the fields, largely due to the language used. Their successes though went up greatly when they took on board advice from journals and imitated existing articles more closely and eventually got 7 articles out of the 20 accepted for publication, with 7 others still in consideration at the time the study was exposed as a hoax.

Results

• They spent "10 months writing the papers, averaging one new paper roughly every thirteen days. (Seven papers published over seven years is frequently claimed to be the number sufficient to earn tenure at most major universities)".
• One of the papers (a paper on how dogs humping in parks could be applied to rape culture, which insinuated that men should be trained like dogs) was honoured as one of twelve leading pieces in feminist geography as a part of the 'Gender,Place and Culture' journal's 25th anniversary celebration.
• They were also invited to peer-review other papers no less than 4 times
• They also published the comments made by journals, making the claim that some of the comments support their claim as well as the results.

Support to the Studies

There was a lot of support coming from academics in other fields although not all as I will show later:

• The renowned Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker tweeted "s there any idea so outlandish that it won’t be published in a Critical/PoMo/Identity/‘Theory’ journal?"
• Yascha Mounk (A professor of political theory John Hopkins and lecturer at Havard) was one of the fiercest defenders of the hoax, writing the article 'The Circling of the Academic Wagons'. He praises the authors' excellent and imitative use of postmodern jargon and accuses critics of the hoax as being ad hominem and missing the issues it has raised.
• Richard Dawkins in response to criticism of the research technique and lack of control or comparison to other fields said "How would you react if you saw the following letter: "Dear Mr Orwell, It has come to our notice that your novel, Animal Farm, attributes to pigs the ability to talk, and to walk on their hind legs, chanting 'Four legs good, two legs better'. This is directly counter to known zoological facts about the Family Suidae, and you are therefore arraigned on a charge of falsifying data..." as an allegory for the criticism being irrelevant to the point the hoax was trying to make.
• As well as other academics there was also a large mainstream media social media reaction, both supporting it and criticising it. There quite prevalent derision of the subjects online.

Criticism of the Studies

• In an article for 'Slate' David Engber said that if you tried a similar hoax in many other academic field with peer-reviewed journals you could do the same thing.
• David Schieber said he was a reviewer on "Rubbing One Out", and argued that the hoaxers selectively quoted from his review. "They were turning my attempt to help the authors of a rejected paper into an indictment of my field and the journal I reviewed for, even though we rejected the paper."
• Many also criticised the way that by focussing on a small number of fields, they may be missing greater issues with the peer-review system.
• There was suggestion of hypocrisy, due to the authors doing the hoax and choosing the publications for political reasons, while accusing the fields of their own political bias.

Fostering Academic Integrity

If the first studies regarding academic integrity in research were initiated in the 1980s and early 1990s, very little empirical information were available to support the assumptions made on the subject. While some surveys suggested academic dishonesty might be more widespread than expected , researchers maintained that peer review preserves research from such deviations.

Based on Steneck, N.H. SCI ENG ETHICS (2006) 12: 53. https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00022268

Discussion on Truth

- Constructivism is a relevant form of truth in some areas, and criticising it in the wrong context will not provide relevant results. Also, it seems to favour other types of truth, such as positivist, empirical and objective truth, when different types of truth are necessary in different fields and when dealing with different issues.

- While it might be relevant to apply different truths in different disciplines in some cases, constructivist truth is not applicable to physical concepts like gravity. However, constructivist truth is used in other areas of science. For instance, when researching mental illnesses constructivism is useful.

References

Beauchamp. Z. The controversy around hoax studies in critical theory, explained https://www.vox.com/2018/10/15/17951492/grievance-studies-sokal-squared-hoax