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The author appears to be talking about comparative literature exclusively. It’s truly a misleading title. Comparative literature (or “critical theory” or “dept

The author appears to be talking about comparative literature exclusively. It’s truly a misleading title. Comparative literature (or “critical theory” or “dept of rhetoric” or whatever fanciful name they’re using) is indeed the cultiest field of academia. It’s why they’re so easy to punk. (See: Sokal affairs.)

FreakLegion 8y ago
The sciences haven't done any better at quality control than the humanities. See: Bogdanov affair, "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?", etc.
- jhbadger 8y ago
  Not really comparable at all. The "Social Text" affair was a major deal because "Social Text" was a major venue of postmodernism at the time, and it was a major cause of the fall of postmodernism in academia. Nobody was "fooled" by the Bogdanovs -- they were French TV personalities who managed to get a couple of bogus papers published in extremely low impact journals that hardly anyone read. Similarly with "Who's Afraid of Peer Review" -- there are thousands of minor journals out there and some aren't very picky about what they publish. In science, it is important to take note of where something is published as opposed to the mere fact that it is.
  - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
    > The "Social Text" affair was a major deal because "Social Text" was a major venue of postmodernism at the time Social Text was in fact a pretty niche venue and it was not even peer reviewed. Yes, its contents were risible and easy to lampoon, but Sokal’s feat wasn’t the crushing blow on the modern humanities that it is often presented as.
  - FreakLegion 8y ago
    Social Text wasn't a major venue (of postmodernism or anything else), and Sokal's hoax didn't cause a fall of postmodernism in academia. Far from it. When I left academia in 2009 it was still the dominant perspective, and that doesn't seem to have changed. Fish's response to Sokal is also exemplary: What sociologists of science say is that of course the world is real and independent of our observations but that accounts of the world are produced by observers and are therefore relative to their capacities, education, training, etc. It is not the world or its properties but the vocabularies in whose terms we know them that are socially constructed -- fashioned by human beings -- which is why our understanding of those properties is continually changing. Distinguishing fact from fiction is surely the business of science, but the means of doing so are not perspicuous in nature -- for if they were, there would be no work to be done. Consequently, the history of science is a record of controversies about what counts as evidence and how facts are to be established. Those who concern themselves with this history neither dispute the accomplishments of science nor deny the existence or power of scientific procedure. They just maintain and demonstrate that the nature of scientific procedure is a question continually debated in its own precincts. What results is an incredibly complex and rich story, full of honor for scientists, and this is the story sociologists of science are trying to tell and get right.

FreakLegion 8y ago

The sciences haven't done any better at quality control than the humanities. See: Bogdanov affair, "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?", etc.

jhbadger 8y ago
Not really comparable at all. The "Social Text" affair was a major deal because "Social Text" was a major venue of postmodernism at the time, and it was a major cause of the fall of postmodernism in academia. Nobody was "fooled" by the Bogdanovs -- they were French TV personalities who managed to get a couple of bogus papers published in extremely low impact journals that hardly anyone read. Similarly with "Who's Afraid of Peer Review" -- there are thousands of minor journals out there and some aren't very picky about what they publish. In science, it is important to take note of where something is published as opposed to the mere fact that it is.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  > The "Social Text" affair was a major deal because "Social Text" was a major venue of postmodernism at the time Social Text was in fact a pretty niche venue and it was not even peer reviewed. Yes, its contents were risible and easy to lampoon, but Sokal’s feat wasn’t the crushing blow on the modern humanities that it is often presented as.
- FreakLegion 8y ago
  Social Text wasn't a major venue (of postmodernism or anything else), and Sokal's hoax didn't cause a fall of postmodernism in academia. Far from it. When I left academia in 2009 it was still the dominant perspective, and that doesn't seem to have changed. Fish's response to Sokal is also exemplary: What sociologists of science say is that of course the world is real and independent of our observations but that accounts of the world are produced by observers and are therefore relative to their capacities, education, training, etc. It is not the world or its properties but the vocabularies in whose terms we know them that are socially constructed -- fashioned by human beings -- which is why our understanding of those properties is continually changing. Distinguishing fact from fiction is surely the business of science, but the means of doing so are not perspicuous in nature -- for if they were, there would be no work to be done. Consequently, the history of science is a record of controversies about what counts as evidence and how facts are to be established. Those who concern themselves with this history neither dispute the accomplishments of science nor deny the existence or power of scientific procedure. They just maintain and demonstrate that the nature of scientific procedure is a question continually debated in its own precincts. What results is an incredibly complex and rich story, full of honor for scientists, and this is the story sociologists of science are trying to tell and get right.