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The Sokal Hoax
- Nzen 9y agotl;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 9y agoThese 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_stings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_s...
- tomlock 9y agoI 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.
- ekglimmer 9y agoThat'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_stings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_s...). 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.