Sokal Affair
Encyclopedia
The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal
, a physics
professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text
, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies
. The submission was an experiment to test the publication's intellectual rigor and, specifically, to learn if such a journal would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if it (a) sounded good and (b) flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."
The article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
", published in the Social Text Spring/Summer 1996 "Science Wars
" issue, proposed that quantum gravity
is a social and linguistic construct. At that time, the journal did not practice academic peer review
and did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist. On its date of publication (May 1996), Sokal revealed in Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax, identifying it as "a pastiche of Left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense . . . structured around the silliest quotations [by postmodernist academics] he could find about mathematics and physics".
The resultant academic and public quarrels concerned the scholarly
merit, or lack thereof, of humanistic commentary about the physical sciences; the influence of postmodern
philosophy on social disciplines in general; academic ethics
, including whether Sokal was wrong to deceive the editors and readers of Social Text; and whether the journal had exercised the appropriate intellectual rigor before publishing
the pseudoscientific article.
, Sokal said he was inspired to submit the hoax article after reading Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science
(1994), by Paul R. Gross
and Norman Levitt
. In their book, Gross and Levitt reported an anti-intellectual trend in university liberal arts departments (especially English departments) which had caused them to become dominated by a "trendy" branch of post-modernist deconstructionism.
Higher Superstition argued that in the 1990s, a group of academics whom the authors referred to collectively as "the Academic Left" was dominated by professors who concentrated on racism
, sexism
, and other perceived prejudices, and that science was eventually included among their targets—later provoking the "Science Wars
", which questioned the validity of scientific objectivity
. Academic journals in the humanities were publishing articles by writers who, scientists argued, demonstrated little or no knowledge of science. Per the introduction: "A curious fact about the recent left-critique of science is the degree to which its instigators have overcome their former timidity, of indifference towards the subject, not by studying it in detail, but rather by creating a repertoire of rationalizations for avoiding such study."
After analyzing essays from "the academic Left", scientists argued that some of these critical writers were ignorant of the original scientific documents they were criticizing and, therefore, were making a series of nonsensical statements about the nature and intent of science. Gross and Levitt found it especially troubling that academic journals were not judging the intellectual integrity of the scholarship through peer review
but were merely judging papers according to their political tilt. Higher Superstition argued that for an article to be published in some academic journals, especially those associated with the humanities, it needed only to display "the proper leftist thought" and to be written by—or to quote—well-known leftist authors.
Thus, Higher Superstition was an attempt to challenge purportedly uncritical subjectivist
thought, the validity of which otherwise went largely uncriticized. Moreover, the book served as an argument from scientists that the Science Wars were primarily fought by non-scientists who were pushing contentious claims about the dubiousness of scientific objectivity
.
obsequiousness, fawning references to deconstructionist writers, and sufficient quantities of feminist
and socialist
terminology.
has progressive
political implications, and that the "morphogenetic field" (a New Age
concept by Rupert Sheldrake
) could be a cutting-edge theory of quantum gravity. He concluded that, since "physical reality" is, at bottom, a social and linguistic construct, a "liberatory science" and an "emancipatory mathematics", spurning "the elite caste canon of 'high science'", must be established for a "postmodern science [that] provide[s] powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project." Moreover, the article's footnotes contain obvious (to mathematicians) jokes, such as:
issue. "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" was the only article submitted by a natural scientist. Later, after Sokal's self-exposure of his pseudoscientific
hoax
article in the journal Lingua Franca, the Social Text editors explained that they had requested editorial changes that Sokal refused to make, and had had concerns about the quality of the writing. Nonetheless, despite designating the physicist as a "difficult, uncooperative author," and noting that such writers were "well known to journal editors", Social Text
published the article in acknowledgment of the author's credentials in the May 1996 Spring/Summer "Science Wars" issue.
(2002), the Bogdanov Affair
(2002), and other instances of published poor science. After the Sokal Hoax, Social Text
established an article peer review
process.
and concluded that Social Text
"felt comfortable publishing an article on quantum physics without bothering to consult anyone knowledgeable in the subject" because of its ideological proclivities and editorial bias. In their defense, the Social Text editors said they believed that "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", "was the earnest attempt of a professional scientist to seek some kind of affirmation from postmodern philosophy for developments in his field" and that "its status as parody does not alter, substantially, our interest in the piece, itself, as a symptomatic document." Besides criticizing his writing style, the Social Text editor
s accused Sokal of behaving unethically
in deceiving them.
In response, Sokal said that their response illustrated the problem he highlighted. Social Text, as an academic journal, published the article not because it was faithful, true, and accurate to its quantum gravity
subject, but because an "Academic Authority
" had written it and because of the appearance of the obscure
writing. The editors admitted that was true; they said they considered it poorly written but published it because they felt Sokal was an academic seeking their intellectual affirmation. Sokal stated in his response:
, as the hoax was revealed by Sokal, French philosopher Jacques Derrida
was initially one of the favourite targets of discredit, particularly in newspapers coverage. For instance a US weekly magazine used two images of Derrida, a photo and a caricature
, to illustrate a "dossier" on the Sokal affair in which Derrida's name didn't appear once.
Asked for a response by daily Le Monde
, Derrida said that the aim of the US media was "to discredit what is considered the exorbitant and cumbersome 'credit' of a foreign professor."
science and technologies department chairman, wrote "The Sokal Affair in Context" (1997) comparing Sokal's hoax to "Confirmational Response: Bias Among Social Work Journals" (1990), an article by William M. Epstein published in Science, Technology, & Human Values. Epstein used a similar setup to Sokal's: he submitted fictitious articles to real academic journals to measure their response. Though far more methodologically rigorous than Sokal's work, it received scant media attention. Hilgartner thus argued that the intellectual impact of the successful Sokal hoax cannot be attributed to its quality as a "demonstration" but rather to journalistic hyperbole and the anti-intellectual biases of some American journalist
s.
The Sokal Affair scandal extended from academia to the public press. The anthropologist
Bruno Latour
, criticized in Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
(1998), described the scandal as a "tempest in a tea cup". The mathematician
Gabriel Stolzenberg wrote essays meant to discredit the claims of Sokal and his allies, arguing that Sokal and allies insufficiently grasped the philosophy they are criticizing, hence, rendering their criticism meaningless. In the Social Studies of Science journal, Bricmont and Sokal responded to Stolzenberg, denouncing his "tendentious misrepresentations" of their work, and criticizing Stolzenberg's commentary about the Strong programme
. In the same issue, Stolzenberg replied, arguing that their critique and allegations of misrepresentation were based upon misreadings. He advised readers to slowly and skeptically examine the arguments proposed by each party, bearing in mind the dictum that "the obvious is sometimes the enemy of the true".
responded to the Sokal Affair publishing hoax in the paper "Science Can Do Better than Sokal: A Commentary on the So-Called Science Wars", which he presented at the Postmodernism and the Social Sciences conference at the New School for Social Research; Alan Sokal was a participant. Newman calls for the union of science
and postmodernism
—proposing that postmodernism is not a critique of science, per se, but of the inappropriate application of the scientific paradigm to psychology.
co-wrote Impostures Intellectuelles (US: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
, UK: Intellectual Impostures, 1998). The book featured analysis of writing extracts from established intellectual
s that contained blatant abuses of scientific terminology. It closed with a critical summary of postmodernism
and criticism of the Strong programme
of social constructionism
in the sociology of scientific knowledge
.
Student subjects were randomly separated into treatment and control groups; both groups were presented with copies of Sokal's hoax article. Those in the control condition were led to believe that it was penned by another student; those in the treatment condition were told it was written by a famous academic. The experimenters found that those subjects who believed that the author of the text was a high-status intellectual were significantly more likely to claim that the text was comprehensible, interesting and valuable. The results of the experiment thus suggested that Sokal was correct to claim that academic status
may account for the intellectual appeal of unintelligible academic texts.
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
, a physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text
Social Text
Social Text is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception as an independent editorial collective in 1979, Social Text has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment...
, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
. The submission was an experiment to test the publication's intellectual rigor and, specifically, to learn if such a journal would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if it (a) sounded good and (b) flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."
The article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
Quantum gravity
Quantum gravity is the field of theoretical physics which attempts to develop scientific models that unify quantum mechanics with general relativity...
", published in the Social Text Spring/Summer 1996 "Science Wars
Science wars
The science wars were a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory which took place principally in the US in the 1990s...
" issue, proposed that quantum gravity
Quantum gravity
Quantum gravity is the field of theoretical physics which attempts to develop scientific models that unify quantum mechanics with general relativity...
is a social and linguistic construct. At that time, the journal did not practice academic peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
and did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist. On its date of publication (May 1996), Sokal revealed in Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax, identifying it as "a pastiche of Left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense . . . structured around the silliest quotations [by postmodernist academics] he could find about mathematics and physics".
The resultant academic and public quarrels concerned the scholarly
Scholarly method
Scholarly method or scholarship is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public.-Methods:...
merit, or lack thereof, of humanistic commentary about the physical sciences; the influence of postmodern
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
philosophy on social disciplines in general; academic ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
, including whether Sokal was wrong to deceive the editors and readers of Social Text; and whether the journal had exercised the appropriate intellectual rigor before publishing
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
the pseudoscientific article.
Background
In an interview on the NPR program All Things ConsideredAll Things Considered
All Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...
, Sokal said he was inspired to submit the hoax article after reading Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science
Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science
Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science is a book by biologist Paul R. Gross and mathematician Norman Levitt, published in 1994. Levitt states he is a leftist trying to save the "academic left" from itself by exposing misuses and abuses of science to advance political...
(1994), by Paul R. Gross
Paul R. Gross
Paul R. Gross is a biologist and author, perhaps best known to the general public for Higher Superstition , written with Norman Levitt. Gross is the University Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Virginia; he previously served the university as Provost and Vice-President...
and Norman Levitt
Norman Levitt
Norman Jay Levitt was a mathematician at Rutgers University. He was born in The Bronx and received a bachelors degree from Harvard College in 1963. He received a PhD from Princeton University in 1967...
. In their book, Gross and Levitt reported an anti-intellectual trend in university liberal arts departments (especially English departments) which had caused them to become dominated by a "trendy" branch of post-modernist deconstructionism.
Higher Superstition argued that in the 1990s, a group of academics whom the authors referred to collectively as "the Academic Left" was dominated by professors who concentrated on racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
, and other perceived prejudices, and that science was eventually included among their targets—later provoking the "Science Wars
Science wars
The science wars were a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory which took place principally in the US in the 1990s...
", which questioned the validity of scientific objectivity
Objectivity (science)
Objectivity in science is a value that informs how science is practiced and how scientific truths are created. It is the idea that scientists, in attempting to uncover truths about the natural world, must aspire to eliminate personal biases, a priori commitments, emotional involvement, etc...
. Academic journals in the humanities were publishing articles by writers who, scientists argued, demonstrated little or no knowledge of science. Per the introduction: "A curious fact about the recent left-critique of science is the degree to which its instigators have overcome their former timidity, of indifference towards the subject, not by studying it in detail, but rather by creating a repertoire of rationalizations for avoiding such study."
After analyzing essays from "the academic Left", scientists argued that some of these critical writers were ignorant of the original scientific documents they were criticizing and, therefore, were making a series of nonsensical statements about the nature and intent of science. Gross and Levitt found it especially troubling that academic journals were not judging the intellectual integrity of the scholarship through peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
but were merely judging papers according to their political tilt. Higher Superstition argued that for an article to be published in some academic journals, especially those associated with the humanities, it needed only to display "the proper leftist thought" and to be written by—or to quote—well-known leftist authors.
Thus, Higher Superstition was an attempt to challenge purportedly uncritical subjectivist
Subjectivism
Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms like Solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it...
thought, the validity of which otherwise went largely uncriticized. Moreover, the book served as an argument from scientists that the Science Wars were primarily fought by non-scientists who were pushing contentious claims about the dubiousness of scientific objectivity
Objectivity (science)
Objectivity in science is a value that informs how science is practiced and how scientific truths are created. It is the idea that scientists, in attempting to uncover truths about the natural world, must aspire to eliminate personal biases, a priori commitments, emotional involvement, etc...
.
The article
Sokal reasoned that, if the presumption of editorial laziness is correct, the nonsensical content of his article would be irrelevant to whether the editors would publish it. What would matter would be ideologicIdeology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
obsequiousness, fawning references to deconstructionist writers, and sufficient quantities of feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
and socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
terminology.
Content of the article
Sokal wrote "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", an article proposing that quantum gravityQuantum gravity
Quantum gravity is the field of theoretical physics which attempts to develop scientific models that unify quantum mechanics with general relativity...
has progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
political implications, and that the "morphogenetic field" (a New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
concept by Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake is an English scientist. He is known for having proposed an unorthodox account of morphogenesis and for his research into parapsychology. His books and papers stem from his theory of morphic resonance, and cover topics such as animal and plant development and behaviour, memory,...
) could be a cutting-edge theory of quantum gravity. He concluded that, since "physical reality" is, at bottom, a social and linguistic construct, a "liberatory science" and an "emancipatory mathematics", spurning "the elite caste canon of 'high science'", must be established for a "postmodern science [that] provide[s] powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project." Moreover, the article's footnotes contain obvious (to mathematicians) jokes, such as:
Publication
Sokal submitted the article to Social Text, whose editors were collecting articles for the Science WarsScience wars
The science wars were a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory which took place principally in the US in the 1990s...
issue. "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" was the only article submitted by a natural scientist. Later, after Sokal's self-exposure of his pseudoscientific
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
hoax
Hoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
article in the journal Lingua Franca, the Social Text editors explained that they had requested editorial changes that Sokal refused to make, and had had concerns about the quality of the writing. Nonetheless, despite designating the physicist as a "difficult, uncooperative author," and noting that such writers were "well known to journal editors", Social Text
Social Text
Social Text is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception as an independent editorial collective in 1979, Social Text has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment...
published the article in acknowledgment of the author's credentials in the May 1996 Spring/Summer "Science Wars" issue.
Peer review
In 1996, Social Text did not conduct peer review because its editors believed that an editorial open policy would stimulate more original, less conventional research. The editors argued that, in that context, Sokal's article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was a fraudulent betrayal of their trust. Moreover, they further argued that scientific peer review does not necessarily detect intellectual fraud, viz. the later Schön scandalJan Hendrik Schön
The Schön scandal concerns German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs with semiconductors that were later discovered to be fraudulent...
(2002), the Bogdanov Affair
Bogdanov Affair
The Bogdanov Affair is an academic dispute regarding the legitimacy of a series of theoretical physics papers written by French twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanov . These papers were published in reputable scientific journals, and were alleged by their authors to culminate in a proposed theory for...
(2002), and other instances of published poor science. After the Sokal Hoax, Social Text
Social Text
Social Text is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception as an independent editorial collective in 1979, Social Text has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment...
established an article peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
process.
Follow up between Sokal and the editors
In the May 1996 issue of Lingua Franca, in the article "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies", Sokal revealed that his "Transgressing the Boundaries" was a hoaxHoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
and concluded that Social Text
Social Text
Social Text is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception as an independent editorial collective in 1979, Social Text has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment...
"felt comfortable publishing an article on quantum physics without bothering to consult anyone knowledgeable in the subject" because of its ideological proclivities and editorial bias. In their defense, the Social Text editors said they believed that "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", "was the earnest attempt of a professional scientist to seek some kind of affirmation from postmodern philosophy for developments in his field" and that "its status as parody does not alter, substantially, our interest in the piece, itself, as a symptomatic document." Besides criticizing his writing style, the Social Text editor
Copy editing
Copy editing is the work that an editor does to improve the formatting, style, and accuracy of text. Unlike general editing, copy editing might not involve changing the substance of the text. Copy refers to written or typewritten text for typesetting, printing, or publication...
s accused Sokal of behaving unethically
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
in deceiving them.
In response, Sokal said that their response illustrated the problem he highlighted. Social Text, as an academic journal, published the article not because it was faithful, true, and accurate to its quantum gravity
Quantum gravity
Quantum gravity is the field of theoretical physics which attempts to develop scientific models that unify quantum mechanics with general relativity...
subject, but because an "Academic Authority
Argument from authority
Argument from authority is a special type of inductive argument which often takes the form of a statistical syllogism....
" had written it and because of the appearance of the obscure
Obscurantism
Obscurantism is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or the full details of some matter from becoming known. There are two, common, historical and intellectual, denotations: 1) restricting knowledge—opposition to the spread of knowledge, a policy of withholding knowledge from the...
writing. The editors admitted that was true; they said they considered it poorly written but published it because they felt Sokal was an academic seeking their intellectual affirmation. Sokal stated in his response:
Mainstream media coverage
In the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, as the hoax was revealed by Sokal, French philosopher Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
was initially one of the favourite targets of discredit, particularly in newspapers coverage. For instance a US weekly magazine used two images of Derrida, a photo and a caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
, to illustrate a "dossier" on the Sokal affair in which Derrida's name didn't appear once.
Asked for a response by daily Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
, Derrida said that the aim of the US media was "to discredit what is considered the exorbitant and cumbersome 'credit' of a foreign professor."
Academic criticism
Stephen Hilgartner, the Cornell UniversityCornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
science and technologies department chairman, wrote "The Sokal Affair in Context" (1997) comparing Sokal's hoax to "Confirmational Response: Bias Among Social Work Journals" (1990), an article by William M. Epstein published in Science, Technology, & Human Values. Epstein used a similar setup to Sokal's: he submitted fictitious articles to real academic journals to measure their response. Though far more methodologically rigorous than Sokal's work, it received scant media attention. Hilgartner thus argued that the intellectual impact of the successful Sokal hoax cannot be attributed to its quality as a "demonstration" but rather to journalistic hyperbole and the anti-intellectual biases of some American journalist
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
s.
The Sokal Affair scandal extended from academia to the public press. The anthropologist
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour is a French sociologist of science and anthropologist and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies...
, criticized in Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
Fashionable Nonsense
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science is a book by professors Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont...
(1998), described the scandal as a "tempest in a tea cup". The mathematician
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
Gabriel Stolzenberg wrote essays meant to discredit the claims of Sokal and his allies, arguing that Sokal and allies insufficiently grasped the philosophy they are criticizing, hence, rendering their criticism meaningless. In the Social Studies of Science journal, Bricmont and Sokal responded to Stolzenberg, denouncing his "tendentious misrepresentations" of their work, and criticizing Stolzenberg's commentary about the Strong programme
Strong programme
The strong programme or Strong Sociology is a variety of the sociology of scientific knowledge particularly associated with David Bloor, Barry Barnes, Harry Collins, Donald A. MacKenzie, and John Henry. The strong programme's influence on Science and Technology Studies is credited as being...
. In the same issue, Stolzenberg replied, arguing that their critique and allegations of misrepresentation were based upon misreadings. He advised readers to slowly and skeptically examine the arguments proposed by each party, bearing in mind the dictum that "the obvious is sometimes the enemy of the true".
Science war commentary
In spring of 1997, the postmodern philosopher Fred NewmanFred Newman
Frederick Delano "Fred" Newman was an American philosopher, psychotherapist, playwright and political activist, and creator of a therapeutic modality called Social Therapy.-Early life:...
responded to the Sokal Affair publishing hoax in the paper "Science Can Do Better than Sokal: A Commentary on the So-Called Science Wars", which he presented at the Postmodernism and the Social Sciences conference at the New School for Social Research; Alan Sokal was a participant. Newman calls for the union of science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
—proposing that postmodernism is not a critique of science, per se, but of the inappropriate application of the scientific paradigm to psychology.
Book by Sokal and Bricmont
In 1997, Sokal and Jean BricmontJean Bricmont
Jean Bricmont is a Belgian theoretical physicist, philosopher of science and a professor at the Université catholique de Louvain. He works on renormalization group and nonlinear differential equations....
co-wrote Impostures Intellectuelles (US: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
Fashionable Nonsense
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science is a book by professors Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont...
, UK: Intellectual Impostures, 1998). The book featured analysis of writing extracts from established intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
s that contained blatant abuses of scientific terminology. It closed with a critical summary of postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
and criticism of the Strong programme
Strong programme
The strong programme or Strong Sociology is a variety of the sociology of scientific knowledge particularly associated with David Bloor, Barry Barnes, Harry Collins, Donald A. MacKenzie, and John Henry. The strong programme's influence on Science and Technology Studies is credited as being...
of social constructionism
Social constructionism
Social constructionism and social constructivism are sociological theories of knowledge that consider how social phenomena or objects of consciousness develop in social contexts. A social construction is a concept or practice that is the construct of a particular group...
in the sociology of scientific knowledge
Sociology of scientific knowledge
The sociology of scientific knowledge ' is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing "with the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity."...
.
Sociological replication
Even though many people found Sokal's hoax convincing, it was a demonstration as opposed to a rigorous scientific study. For this reason, its main hypothesis was later replicated in a controlled experiment by Cornell sociologist Robb Willer, who self-published the results in his homepage; the report was not published by a peer-reviewed journal, which returned it with a "Revise and Resubmit" advice.Student subjects were randomly separated into treatment and control groups; both groups were presented with copies of Sokal's hoax article. Those in the control condition were led to believe that it was penned by another student; those in the treatment condition were told it was written by a famous academic. The experimenters found that those subjects who believed that the author of the text was a high-status intellectual were significantly more likely to claim that the text was comprehensible, interesting and valuable. The results of the experiment thus suggested that Sokal was correct to claim that academic status
Social status
In sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society . It may also refer to a rank or position that one holds in a group, for example son or daughter, playmate, pupil, etc....
may account for the intellectual appeal of unintelligible academic texts.
Similar scandals
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program: a paper randomly generated by the SCIgenSCIgenSCIgen is a program created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that randomly generates nonsense in the form of computer science research papers, including graphs, diagrams, and citations...
program was accepted without peer-review for presentation at the 2005 World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI). The conference announced the prank of having accepted the article as not peer reviewPeer reviewPeer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
ed, despite none of the three assigned peer-reviewers having submitted an opinion about its fidelity, veracity, or accuracy to its subject. The three MITMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
graduate students who wrote the hoax article said they were ignorant of the Sokal Affair until after submitting their article. - Bogdanov AffairBogdanov AffairThe Bogdanov Affair is an academic dispute regarding the legitimacy of a series of theoretical physics papers written by French twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanov . These papers were published in reputable scientific journals, and were alleged by their authors to culminate in a proposed theory for...
: about theoretical physicsTheoretical physicsTheoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena...
, called a reverse-Sokal controversy. - Jan Hendrik SchönJan Hendrik SchönThe Schön scandal concerns German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs with semiconductors that were later discovered to be fraudulent...
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, ScienceScience (journal)Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
, and the Physical ReviewPhysical ReviewPhysical Review is an American scientific journal founded in 1893 by Edward Nichols. It publishes original research and scientific and literature reviews on all aspects of physics. It is published by the American Physical Society. The journal is in its third series, and is split in several...
, which were logically consistent with the fabricated data. - Rosenhan experimentRosenhan experimentThe Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1973. It was published in the journal Science under the title "On being sane in insane places." The study is considered an important and influential criticism of...
: the admission of healthy pseudo-patients to twelve psychiatric hospitals. - The Report from Iron MountainThe Report From Iron MountainThe Report from Iron Mountain is a book published in 1967 by Dial Press which puts itself forth as the report of a government panel. The book includes the claim it was authored by a Special Study Group of fifteen men whose identities were to remain secret and that it was not intended to be made...
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report. - Project AlphaProject AlphaProject Alpha was an elaborate hoax orchestrated by the stage magician and skeptic James Randi. It involved planting two fake psychics, Steve Shaw and Michael Edwards, into a paranormal research project. During the initial stages of the investigation, the researchers came to believe that the...
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. - The Ern Malley affairErn MalleyErnest Lalor "Ern" Malley was a fictitious poet and the central figure in Australia's most celebrated literary hoax. The poet, and his entire body of work, were created in one day in 1944 by writers James McAuley and Harold Stewart as a hoax on Max Harris, Angry Penguins, the modernist magazine he...
- A similar hoax, in which deliberately nonsensical poems were accepted for publication by a popular modernist magazine. - DisumbrationismDisumbrationismDisumbrationism was a hoax masquerading as an art movement that was launched in 1924 by Paul Jordan-Smith, a novelist, Latin scholar, and authority on Robert Burton from Los Angeles, California....
: a modern art hoax. - Spectra: A Book of Poetic ExperimentsSpectra (book)Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments was a small volume of poetry published in 1916 by American writers Witter Bynner, who wrote under the pseudonym "Emanuel Morgan", and Arthur Davison Ficke, who wrote as "Anne Knish." The book was intended as satire directed at the Imagism poetry...
: a modernist poetry hoax. - Nat Tate: a 1998 art world hoax, by William BoydWilliam Boyd (writer)William Boyd, CBE is a Scottish novelist and screenwriter.-Biography:Of Scottish descent, Boyd spent his early life in Ghana and Nigeria, in Africa...
. - WIA < > WIA by Niklas Roy: A hoax technological art project commissioned by Ars ElectronicaArs ElectronicaArs Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival. Herbert W. Franke is one of its founders. It became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986. Its director until 1995...
in 2008.
See also
- Chip MorningstarChip MorningstarChip Morningstar is an author, academic and developer of software systems for online entertainment and communication. A University of Michigan graduate, he participated in Project Xanadu, for which the word hypertext was first coined. Later, he overhauled the chat environment known as The Palace,...
, a software developer known for his early hoax involving postmodern deconstruction at the 2nd International Conference on Cyberspace in 1991. - Fictitious entryFictitious entryFictitious entries, also known as fake entries, Mountweazels, ghost word and nihil articles, are deliberately incorrect entries or articles in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, and directories. Entries in reference works normally originate from a reliable external source,...
- Dr. Fox effect, an actor gave a lecture to a group of experts with almost no content but was praised.
- ObscurantismObscurantismObscurantism is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or the full details of some matter from becoming known. There are two, common, historical and intellectual, denotations: 1) restricting knowledge—opposition to the spread of knowledge, a policy of withholding knowledge from the...
- "Politics and the English LanguagePolitics and the English Language"Politics and the English Language" is an essay by George Orwell criticizing "ugly and inaccurate" contemporary written English.Orwell said that political prose was formed "to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Orwell believed...
" (1946), by George OrwellGeorge OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, criticizing the use of verbose language in contemporary political British writing. - Postmodernism GeneratorPostmodernism GeneratorThe Postmodernism Generator is a computer program that automatically produces imitations of postmodernist writing, especially that of critical theory. It was written in 1996 by Andrew Bulhak of Monash University and is currently hosted at . The essays are produced from a formal grammar defined by a...
, a program that automatically produces imitations of postmodernist writing - snarXivSnarXivsnarXiv is a website spoofing the high-energy physics section of the popular electronic scientific paper repository arXiv. It was created in March 2010 by David Simmons-Duffin, a 3rd year Ph.D. student at Harvard University studying theoretical high-energy physics...
, a website that generates plausible sounding titles and abstracts of high-energy physics papers
Further reading
- Sokal, Alan D. and Bricmont, Jean. (1997) Réponse à Jacques Derrida et Max Dorra, in Le MondeLe MondeLe Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
, 12 December 1997, page 23.
External links
- Alan Sokal Articles on the Social Text Affair Alan Sokal's own page with very extensive links; includes the original article
- Original hoax article (HTML)
- Sokal Affair quotes
- Sokal's response to the editors
- A discussion by Richard Dawkins of nonsense in post-modernist literature
- the new site for Andrew Bulkan's Postmodernism Generator mentioned in Richard Dawkins' article above
- Gabriel Stolzenberg's collected essays on this and related topics
- The Sokal Hoax: At Whom Are We Laughing?