> The hoax was dubbed "Sokal Squared," after a similar stunt pulled in 1996 by Alan Sokal, then a physicist at New York University. This has as much to do with

> The hoax was dubbed "Sokal Squared," after a similar stunt pulled in 1996 by Alan Sokal, then a physicist at New York University. This has as much to do with Sokal's hoax as those battery fire-hazards with wheels have to do with "hoverboards". A 'Sokal Squared' hoax should mean something like multiple journal articles getting published-- none of which contain any data to back up their claims-- all claiming to replicate an original journal article which also contains no data to substantiate its claim. The twist that makes Sokal's original hoax clever is there isn't any research being put forward. There is simply an assertion, non-sequiturs, and a repetition of the assertion as the conclusion. He completely left out the "research" part of his journal article. The reason his hoax was so embarrassing for that journal is that no university ever imagined they'd need to make a basic rule that researchers must actually include research in their research papers. That means that Sokal didn't directly break any rules with his hoax, and much of the spotlight remained on the journal for failing to do the trivial job of rejecting submissions that fail to contain content. I'd be willing to bet there was a dean or two and some administrators who met to figure out if Sokal actually broke any of the school's guidelines. I'd also bet they came up with some way they could apply a vaguely worded research guideline to discipline him but decided against it for fear of pushback within the wider research community. Still, it's a reasonable concern when a professor publicly states that they submitted an article to a journal in bad faith, even as a hoax. tldr; it's a nuanced situation that IMO requires lots of reflection. On a completely different topic-- some knuckleheads apparently falsified some data for reasons, and a university is going to discipline them for falsifying data. I don't understand what ethical conundrum I'm supposed to care about here.