Many readers will be familiar with the famous Sokal hoax paper, in which physicist Alan Sokal wrote a nonsensical article on the “hermeneutics of quantum gravity” and got it published in a sociology journal. Other more recent examples of accepted papers include a completely computer-generated mathematics paper and a repeated request to be removed from a mailing list.

Now it seems that climate science has fallen for a similar joke paper. The journal Progress in Human Geography (impact factor 5, which is quite high) has published an article Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research.

Excerpts below are taken from just the first 3 pages of this 24-page masterpiece, plus a final quote from the conclusions. HT David Rose and Barbara Hewson.

“Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied.”

“Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.”

“A critical but overlooked aspect of the human dimensions of glaciers and global change research is the relationship between gender and glaciers.”

“Through a review and synthesis of a multi-disciplinary and wide-ranging literature on human-ice relations, this paper proposes a feminist glaciology framework to analyze human-glacier dynamics, glacier narratives and discourse, and claims to credibility and authority of glaciological knowledge through the lens of feminist studies.”

“A combination of feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology provide the intellectual foundation for feminist glaciology.”

“Feminist glaciology is rooted in, and combines, both feminist science studies and postcolonial science studies to meaningfully shift present-day glacier and ice sciences.”

“The response to simplistic ‘ice is just ice’ discourse is not merely to foreground or single out women and their experiences – that would simply perpetuate binaries and boundaries and ignore deeper foundations. Rather, it is a larger integration of human approaches and sensibilities with the existing dominant physical sciences. Global environmental change research must pluralize its ontologies, epistemologies, and sensibilities.”

Updates:

The “research” was carried out on a $412,930 NSF grant, full details here.

One of the authors seems to be proud that his article is the ‘most-read’ at the journal.

In reply, the journal says that the paper will only be freely available for two weeks, so make sure you download a copy and save it now for future reference.

5 March: The paper now seems to have “gone viral”, with a blog post about it at WUWT, plus various other blogs, several threads at reddit, and CFACT, Reason, etc, BH, even the WSJ.

10 March: The story continues to run:

Feds Paid $709,000 To Academic Who Studies How Glaciers Are Sexist

For the Silliest Academic Research Paper, the Oscar Goes to……

Feminism and icebergs: a new low in climate ‘science’

Climate Deniers Mock ‘Feminist Glaciology’ Study

I Read the Famous Feminist Glaciology Paper So You Don’t Have To

And there are thousands of references to the paper on twitter.

NYT and Fox News.