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from the won't-be-fooled-again,-or-will-they? dept.
Portland State University has initiated disciplinary proceedings against their philosophy professor Peter Boghossian for conspiring with colleagues to submit more than two dozen satirical papers to feminist theory and race-studies journals in an effort to prove those disciplines are academically fraudulent. The hoax papers, some of which were accepted by journals and which were revealed back in October, made Boghossian and his cohorts the international toast of "free thinkers" concerned that college campuses have become paralyzed by political orthodoxy.
After their ruse was revealed, the three authors described their project in an October article in the webzine Areo, which Pluckrose edits. Their goal, they wrote, was to "to study, understand, and expose the reality of grievance studies, which is corrupting academic research." They contend that scholarship that tends to social grievances now dominates some fields, where students and others are bullied into adhering to scholars' worldviews, while lax publishing standards allow the publication of clearly ludicrous articles if the topic is politically fashionable.
Sources:
The Chronicle of Higher Education : Proceedings Start Against 'Sokal Squared' Hoax Professor (archive)
Willamette Week : Professor Who Authored Hoax Papers Says Portland State University Has Launched Disciplinary Proceedings Against Him (archive)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @04:50PM (3 children)
That is just a high-brow version of "actually it's about ethics in gaming journalism"
If rigor and scientific method had anything to do with his goals he would have actually applied the scientific method to this endeavor. But he didn't. He didn't have a testable hypothesis. There were no control papers submitted to any journals to compare results with. He could have submitted bogus heterodox papers, he could have submitted bogus orthodox papers to journals in a difference discipline. He could have submitted valid orthodox papers. He didn't do any of that. But what he did do is learn from the rejected papers in order to refine his hoaxing methods until he could convince some journals to accept his hoaxes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @06:10PM (2 children)
The thing with guys like Boghossian is that they start out from a presumption of bad faith from the people they are opposed to (which in itself is problematic for a researcher, that's not a neutral viewpoint). And then they use that belief to justify acting in bad faith themselves. When that happens, they've moved out of the realm of research and into the realm of partisan advocacy. They became exactly what they imagine others to be. It reminds me of that Anaïs Nin quote - “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
On a semi-unserious note, more and more I enjoy the theory of nominative determinism - the idea that one's name influences ones behavior. Some prominent examples:
Amelia Earhart (air-heart)
Anthony Weiner (dick pics)
Usain Bolt (fastest man alive)
Frank Oz (pay no attention to the puppetmaster behind the curtain)
Diana Nyad (olympic swimmer - nyads are greek water sprites)
And now this Boghossian dude's career is focused on writing bogus papers. Its like he's embracing his destiny.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 12 2019, @06:59PM (1 child)
I completely agree with you that it would have been better if the researchers here adhered to a better methodology or at least got approval from some research-supervising body... or at the very least INFORMED such a body that they were going to do this in advance. It would have been better to have more rigor.
On the other hand, I challenge your last phasing "what they IMAGINE others to be." There's no "imagining." Let's be absolutely clear that the vast majority of the journals they submitted to have loads of political preconceptions that the authors of the hoax articles played into. While I don't believe that all academics are as biased as people around here seem to think, there's no doubt that many of the journals involved here practice a kind of "partisan advocacy." And in fact many academics are out in the open about the fact that they believe "advocacy" for certain causes is essential nowadays.
We can have a debate about what that means and whether it's ethical... but there's no doubt that the authors here are correct about what many of these journals represent in terms of political leanings.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @09:07PM
I think you are conflating a couple of issues. People do research because they think the area is important and they expect the investigation will improve conditions of the people affected by the topics being researched. Similar to reporters, c.f. the famous quote that 'The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.' That's not the same as advocating for an ideological viewpoint.
But even accepting your premise, just because the authors of some articles are practicing advocacy doesn't mean the journal's editorial practices are necessarily biased. At least one reviewer of a hoax article came forward and said that he treated the hoax article on the presumption of good faith and gave feedback in that context - that the paper's author was inexperienced rather than partisan.