The Sokal Hoax Returns

The Public Sphere

Pete and Luke are talking about the new Sokal Hoax, academic authority, and the economic context.

This new controversy was perpetrated by three scholars: James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian. They wrote 20 fake papers in the style of cultural studies but with invented data or ostensibly ridiculous claims, as one title states: “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct." They targeted gender studies, queer studies, and fat studies. The hoaxers claim that because 7 of 20 papers were published in important academic journals—for the most part they were actually marginal publications—journals, it proves that the intellectual bankruptcy of academic identity studies.

• Greg Afinogenov, "Orthodoxxed" N+1.
• Henry Farrell, "Move over Sokal Hoax," Crooked Timber.
• Zach Beauchamp, "The controversy around hoax studies in critical theory, explained," Vox.com.
• Yasha Mounk, "The New Sokal Hoax," The Atlantic.

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