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The relevant measure of banality here is in comparison to what the journals normally publish. What makes e.g. Sokal's hoax important is that he exposed a journa

The relevant measure of banality here is in comparison to what the journals normally publish. What makes e.g. Sokal's hoax important is that he exposed a journal for publishing something the editors didn't even understand. Here, the journals weren't duped into anything - they read and understood the papers, and apparently considered them worth publishing. That's what's so banal about the whole thing.

darawk 8y ago
> The relevant measure of banality here is in comparison to what the journals normally publish. I completely disagree. The point of this story is exactly that this stuff is line with what the journals normally publish. Their entire point is that the stuff they wrote is indistinguishable from these journal's normal fare.
- fenomas 8y ago
  > Their entire point is that the stuff they wrote is indistinguishable from these journal's normal fare. Journals publishing papers indistinguishable from their normal fare is the null hypothesis! If accomplishing that was the authors' goal they could have taken ten months off, surely ;)
  - darawk 8y ago
    Do you not understand what i'm saying? They're criticizing the content of these journals.
    - fenomas 8y ago
      In their capacity as authors of a blog post, sure - but in their capacity as conductors of a social science experiment they're also claiming to have verified a hypothesis (that certain journals would publish absurd papers), and that's the claim I think is weak. Please understand I'm not defending the content of these journals - I'm saying that this ten month hoax doesn't appear to have established anything.
      - darawk 8y ago
        I think I would state their hypothesis as: that the content of these journals is absurd, and by using slightly more absurd hypotheses than their normal fare, we can clearly demonstrate to other people that their content is absurd when those more obviously ridiculous ideas get accepted.
        tptacek 8y ago
        If that's really the case, they could have established the exact same thing simply by quoting real articles from the journal. Obviously, nobody would write a news story about that, and now you see the problem with this hoax.
Udik 8y ago
> he exposed a journal for publishing something the editors didn't even understand This is your assumption. In fact they understood perfectly what the paper meant and that's why they published it. But because the paper was effectively constructed as something without meaning, Sokal managed to prove that their perception of meaning is a delusion. Same thing has been done here: the editors of the journals found perfectly reasonable something that was ridiculous and absurd by construction, thus proving that the sense of reasonabless and soundness is lost to them.
- fenomas 8y ago
  > editors of the journals found perfectly reasonable something that was ridiculous and absurd by construction I understand your point, but my argument here is that the hoax papers cannot reasonably be called "absurd by construction". The authors started out with that goal, but their initial papers apparently all got rejected so they iteratively toned down the absurdity until the papers got published. That's effectively "publishable by construction", isn't it?
  - Udik 8y ago
    They still sound pretty absurd to me.
- Beldin 8y ago
  If the same thing has been done here, what's the point? Sokal already made that point long ago. There is no academic goal in repeating that experiment. Moreover, repeating it 20-fold? That's not even ethical - either one success proves your point, or were going to need a control group and rigorous methodology. Since the trio reject the notion of control groups, they should have understood that getting more than one paper accepted was not furthering their experiment, only their ego.
  - Udik 8y ago
    Strange argument. As far as I know, they submitted the papers to different journals. Sokal's hoax targeted again a different journal in a different field twenty years ago. Of course the results are specific to the journal and the discipline- but even in the case of multiple papers accepted by the same journal, it would just reinforce the result.

darawk 8y ago

> The relevant measure of banality here is in comparison to what the journals normally publish. I completely disagree. The point of this story is exactly that this stuff is line with what the journals normally publish. Their entire point is that the stuff they wrote is indistinguishable from these journal's normal fare.

fenomas 8y ago
> Their entire point is that the stuff they wrote is indistinguishable from these journal's normal fare. Journals publishing papers indistinguishable from their normal fare is the null hypothesis! If accomplishing that was the authors' goal they could have taken ten months off, surely ;)
- darawk 8y ago
  Do you not understand what i'm saying? They're criticizing the content of these journals.
  - fenomas 8y ago
    In their capacity as authors of a blog post, sure - but in their capacity as conductors of a social science experiment they're also claiming to have verified a hypothesis (that certain journals would publish absurd papers), and that's the claim I think is weak. Please understand I'm not defending the content of these journals - I'm saying that this ten month hoax doesn't appear to have established anything.
    - darawk 8y ago
      I think I would state their hypothesis as: that the content of these journals is absurd, and by using slightly more absurd hypotheses than their normal fare, we can clearly demonstrate to other people that their content is absurd when those more obviously ridiculous ideas get accepted.
      - tptacek 8y ago
        If that's really the case, they could have established the exact same thing simply by quoting real articles from the journal. Obviously, nobody would write a news story about that, and now you see the problem with this hoax.

Udik 8y ago

> he exposed a journal for publishing something the editors didn't even understand This is your assumption. In fact they understood perfectly what the paper meant and that's why they published it. But because the paper was effectively constructed as something without meaning, Sokal managed to prove that their perception of meaning is a delusion. Same thing has been done here: the editors of the journals found perfectly reasonable something that was ridiculous and absurd by construction, thus proving that the sense of reasonabless and soundness is lost to them.

fenomas 8y ago
> editors of the journals found perfectly reasonable something that was ridiculous and absurd by construction I understand your point, but my argument here is that the hoax papers cannot reasonably be called "absurd by construction". The authors started out with that goal, but their initial papers apparently all got rejected so they iteratively toned down the absurdity until the papers got published. That's effectively "publishable by construction", isn't it?
- Udik 8y ago
  They still sound pretty absurd to me.
Beldin 8y ago
If the same thing has been done here, what's the point? Sokal already made that point long ago. There is no academic goal in repeating that experiment. Moreover, repeating it 20-fold? That's not even ethical - either one success proves your point, or were going to need a control group and rigorous methodology. Since the trio reject the notion of control groups, they should have understood that getting more than one paper accepted was not furthering their experiment, only their ego.
- Udik 8y ago
  Strange argument. As far as I know, they submitted the papers to different journals. Sokal's hoax targeted again a different journal in a different field twenty years ago. Of course the results are specific to the journal and the discipline- but even in the case of multiple papers accepted by the same journal, it would just reinforce the result.