An embarrassingly unskeptical article appeared in Skeptic Magazine recently featuring a hoax paper published in a Gender Studies journal by two authors: James Lindsay (past guest of the show) and Peter Boghossian. Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine, and several major figures in the skeptic movement like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins took the conclusion that Gender Studies as a field has been demolished by this hoax. This is incredibly irresponsible. The hoax paper accomplished no such thing, and Eli is here to explain in depth why.

Links:

Skeptic Magazine Article

Other sokal hoaxes:

A US nuclear physics conference accepted a paper written entirely in autocomplete.

a paper written entirely in autocomplete. A trio of MIT grad students created an algorithm that creates fake scientific papers – in 2013 IEEE and Springer Publishing found 120 published papers had been generated by the program.

published papers had been by the program. A paper entitled “Get me off your fucking mailing list” was accepted for publication by computer science journal.

for publication by computer science journal. A 2013 hoax saw a scientific paper about fictional lichen published in several hundred journals.

Cogent OA FAQ

Lichen Paper published in 45% of DOAJ publishers

Gender Studies Journal Rankings

Excellent Debunk by Bleedingheartlibertarians

Other Excellent Debunk, with Source for Sokal Quote

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