Sokal's Children
Reflections on the Grievance Studies Hoax
Economist Bryan Caplan recently Substacked his Econlib post on the Sokal 2.0 hoax. This inspired me to do the same with my post from the now defunct Social Geometer blog. It is reposted here with minor edits.
Background: This Areo piece and the ensuing flurry of social media hot takes. See also the Sokal Affair.
The Biggest Problem with the Hoax is the Hoax
A major strength of Alan Sokal’s paper for Social Text was that it didn’t present fake data. It was a nonsensical and error-ridden argument that would be just as nonsensical and error-ridden if it had been genuine. He wasn’t trying to fool the journal about anything other than his intentions, which shouldn’t be relevant to the review process anyway. Even a basic amount of common sense, like running the paper by a physics student, or saying “we don’t understand physics, submit somewhere else,” could have undid his plan. Thus he showed the editors either lacked sense or didn’t care about accuracy.
“I fooled you” wasn’t the damning part. We don’t expect editors and reviewers to investigate whether stuff is submitted in good faith. We expect them to investigate if its correct or incompetent.
A lot of the discourse around Sokal 2.0 focuses on the “I fooled you” part. But the damning thing isn’t that you can succeed in misrepresenting yourself to editors, it is that the editors publish garbage that would still be garbage even if it were genuine. The hoax aspect of the hoax is overemphasized, both in design and in people’s reactions to it.