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posted by takyon on Thursday October 04 2018, @07:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the mein-wort dept.

In an effort to show how politically correct nonsense and evil (but I repeat myself) can get through academic peer review and be published, some academics did just that with seven papers. More are partly through the process.

A particularly funny and horrifying case is the Gender Studies journal Affilia. Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf only needed to be translated with wording in the typical style of intersectionality theory, and it passed muster.

Another published paper, considered exemplary scholarship by the journal that published it, contains this whopper: "Dog parks are microcosms where hegemonic masculinist norms governing queering behavior and compulsory heterosexuality can be observed in a cross-species environment."

The Grievance Studies Scandal: Five Academics Respond

Now, three academics have submitted twenty spoof manuscripts to journals chosen for respectability in their various disciplines. Seven papers were accepted before the experiment stopped; more are surviving peer review. This new raid on screamingly barmy pseudo-scholarship is the Alan Sokal Opening, weaponised. Like dedicated traceurs in a Parkour-fest, the trio scrambled over the terrain of what they call Grievance Studies. And they dropped fire-crackers. One published paper proposed that dog parks are "rape-condoning spaces." Another, entitled "Our Struggle is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism" reworked, and substantially altered, part of Mein Kampf. The most shocking, (not published, its status is "revise and resubmit") is a "Feminist Approach to Pedagogy." It proposes "experiential reparations" as a corrective for privileged students. These include sitting on the floor, wearing chains, or being purposely spoken over. Reviewers have commented that the authors risk exploiting underprivileged students by burdening them with an expectation to teach about privilege.

Also at WSJ.

Related: Publishing Stings Find Shoddy Peer Review
Absurd Paper Accepted by Open-Access Computer Science Journal
Media World Fooled with Bogus Chocolate Diet Story


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @04:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @04:21PM (#744162)

    Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.

    Then it's a duck. If it just does the walk, it could be a nazi. Do you have video evidence of this team goosestepping? Well known right wing journal Mother Jones [motherjones.com] did not mention any funny walking.

    Fifth: Yes, academia is predicated on the base assumption that everyone involved is operating in good faith, and it tends to break down when someone just straight-up makes shit up. How is that a fault of academia?

    It's not just the entirely fictional postmodernist disciplines, all the social sciences. [slate.com] At least according to that well known right wing site, Slate.