Sokal Squared

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Sokal Squared (in English also Grievance Studies affair , German about "Sokal [affair] in the square") describes a controversy about quality standards in the humanities and social sciences . Three American scientists have 2017 to 2018 under various pseudonyms total of 20 Hoax - articles in academic journals submitted to the peer review to test -Praxis. The name, based on a contribution by Yascha Mounk , refers to the Sokal affair from 1996.

The creators - James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose - assert that their project arose out of concerns about the corruption of some parts of knowledge production in the United States. So you refer explicitly to the US discourse. The term grievance studies, which has become winged for the affair, also refers to this.

procedure

When the project became known early in October 2018, four of the 20 articles submitted had already been published and three more had been accepted for publication. Six of the articles were rejected and seven more were still in the review process. One of the articles (No. 1 in the table below) was particularly honored by the publishing trade journal for its excellent quality. The project was preceded by the publication of a hoax article entitled The conceptual penis as a social construct , in which the authors argue in the tradition of radical constructivism that the human penis should be equated with a performative toxic masculinity and in close connection with to climate change :

“A change in our discourses in science, technology, policy, economics, society, and various communities is needed to protect marginalized groups, promote the advancement of women, trans, and gender-queer individuals (including non-gendered and gender-skeptical people ), and to remedy environmental impacts that follow from climate change driven by capitalist and neocapitalist overreliance on hypermasculine themes and exploitative utilization of fossil fuels. "

“A change in our discourse in the natural sciences, technology, politics, business, society and in various communities is necessary in order to protect marginalized groups, the advancement of women, trans and gender people (including none Gender Sense and Gender Skeptics) and to remedy the problems arising from climate change fueled by the capitalist and neo-capitalist over-dependence of hyper-male motives and the exploitative use of fossil fuels. "

- Jamie Lindsay & Peter Boyle (pseudonyms)

The 20 articles were deliberately formulated with hair-raising theses to test whether a certain choice of words and attitude are sufficient to be able to place articles in some leading journals (such as Hypatia in Gender Studies ). For example, the authors claimed to have examined the behavior of dogs in various dog parks and enriched it with the analysis of 10,000 dog pens. Be part of it came to the conclusion that there's a rape culture would (rape culture) that a human is comparable, and that the behavior of men thus as could be changed at a dog training and needed. Other articles deal with a feminist reading of Hitler's Mein Kampf (No. 7) or claim that men can and should reduce their homophobia and transphobia by introducing objects anally (No. 3). For the sake of transparency, the authors have released a Google Drive folder on which a self-description of their project, press photos, the papers submitted and the individual feedback from the peer reviews can be found.

reception

After the project became known, numerous articles on freedom of ideology and research ethics were written in specialist journals and in daily and weekly newspapers in a very short time . The New York Times , Wall Street Journal , The Economist and The Atlantic reported, among others . The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Der Spiegel , the Süddeutsche Zeitung , the Schweizer Tages-Anzeiger and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung have reported on the topic in the German-language media . Friday extended the authors' criticism and discussion to include the natural sciences.

Restrictions

At the beginning of January 2019 it became known that the University of Portland had initiated an investigation against Peter Boghossian for scientific misconduct of a research ethical nature due to the Sokal Squared project. In response, numerous scientists have expressed their solidarity with Boghossian, including: a. Richard Dawkins , Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt .

According to Boghossian's information, his university decided that he "should not express his opinion regarding so-called protected groups."

Articles submitted

List of articles submitted in the wake of the Sokal Squared affair
No. Author (s) / pseudonym (s) title journal DOI / Notes Status of the paper (1.11.18)
1 Helen Wilson Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon Gender, Place & Culture doi: 10.1080 / 0966369X.2018.1475346 published / withdrawn
2 Richard Baldwin Who Are They to Judge? Overcoming Anthropometry and a Framework for Fat Bodybuilding Fat Studies doi: 10.1080 / 21604851.2018.1453622 published / withdrawn
3 M. Smith Going in Through the Back Door: Challenging Straight Male Homohysteria and Transphobia through Receptive Penetrative Sex Toy Use Sexuality & Culture doi: 10.1007 / s12119-018-9536-0 published / withdrawn
4th Richard Baldwin An Ethnography of Breastaurant Masculinity: Themes of Objectification, Sexual Conquest, Male Control, and Masculine Toughness in a Sexually Objectifying Restaurant " Sex roles doi: 10.1007 / s11199-018-0962-0 published / withdrawn
5 Richard Baldwin When the Joke Is on You: A Feminist Perspective on How Positionality Influences Satire Hypatia accepted, not (yet) published
6th Carol Miller Moon Meetings and the Meaning of Sisterhood: A Poetic Portrayal of Lived Feminist Spirituality Journal of Poetry Therapy accepted, not (yet) published
7th Maria Gonzalez & Lisa A. Jones Our Struggle is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism Affilia accepted, not (yet) published
8th Lisa A. Jones Rubbing One Out: Defining Metasexual Violence of Objectification Through Nonconsensual Masturbation Sociological Theory declined
9 Carol Miller My Struggle to Dismantle My Whiteness: A Critical-Race Examination of Whiteness from within Whiteness Sociology of Race and Ethnicity declined
10 Carol Miller Queering Plato: Plato's Allegory of the Cave as a Queer-Theoretic Emancipatory Text on Sexuality and Gender GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies declined
11 Richard Baldwin "Pretty Good for a Girl": Feminist Physicality and Women's Bodybuilding Sociology of Sport Journal declined
12 Richard Baldwin Grappling with Hegemonic Masculinity: The Roles of Masculinity and Heteronormativity in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu International Review for the Sociology of Sport declined
13 Richard Baldwin Hegemonic Academic Bullying: The Ethics of Sokal-style Hoax Papers on Gender Studies Journal of Gender Studies declined
14th Richard Baldwin Self-Reflections on Self-Reflections: An Autoethnographic Defense of Autoethnography Journal of Contemporary Ethnography declined
15th Brandon Williams Masculinity and the Others Within: A Schizoethnographic Approach to Autoethnography Qualitative inquiry declined
16 Helen Wilson Rebraiding Masculinity: Redefining the Struggle of Women Under the Domination of the Masculinity Trinity Signs declined
17th Richard Baldwin & Brandon Williams Agency as an Elephant Test for Feminist Porn: Impacts on Male Explicit and Implicit Associations about Women in Society by Immersive Pornography Consumption Porn Studies Revision and resubmission recommended
18th Maria Gonzales The Progressive Stack: An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Pedagogy Hypatia Revision and resubmission recommended
19th Stephanie Moore Super- Frankenstein and the Masculine Imaginary: Feminist Epistemology and Superintelligent Artificial Intelligence Safety Research Feminist Theory Revision and resubmission recommended
20th Maria Gonzales Stars, Planets, and Gender: A Framework for a Feminist Astronomy Women's Studies International Forum Revision and resubmission recommended

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The 'Sokal Squared' hoax sums up American politics Washington Post
  2. ↑ a b Yascha Mounk: What an Audacious Hoax Reveals About Academia . In: The Atlantic . October 5, 2018 ( theatlantic.com [accessed November 1, 2018]).
  3. ↑ Helen Pluckrose: A Response to Portland State's Vanguard's Anonymous Letter. November 12, 2018. Retrieved January 8, 2019 (American English).
  4. ↑ a b 'Sokal Squared': Is Huge Publishing Hoax 'Hilarious and Delightful' or an Ugly Example of Dishonesty and Bad Faith? In: The Chronicle of Higher Education . October 3, 2018 ( chronicle.com [accessed November 1, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Academics Expose 'Grievance Studies' Field by Submitting Hoax Papers to Journals | National Review . In: National Review . October 3, 2018 ( nationalreview.com [accessed November 1, 2018]).
  6. ↑ a b Marc Neumann: How to sell sheer swindle as a science | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . October 10, 2018 ( nzz.ch [accessed November 5, 2018]).
  7. ^ A b Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship - Areo . In: Areo . October 3, 2018 ( areomagazine.com [accessed November 1, 2018]).
  8. ^ Jamie Lindsay, Peter Boyle: The conceptual penis as a social construct . In: Cogent Social Sciences . tape 3 , no. 1 , 2017, doi : 10.1080 / 23311886.2017.1330439 (English, PDF; 464 kB [accessed on November 26, 2017] The study was accepted, but is fictitious. Behind the work are the philosopher Peter Boghossian and the mathematician James Lindsay. As they later announced, they endeavored to “write an absurd paper in the style of post-structuralist, discursive gender theory.” The study was withdrawn.).
  9. ↑ Hoaxers Slip Breastaurants and Dog-Park Sex Into Journals . ( nytimes.com [accessed November 1, 2018]).
  10. ^ Jillian Kay Melchior: Opinion | Fake News Comes to Academia . In: WSJ . ( wsj.com [accessed November 1, 2018]).
  11. ↑ Another set of fake papers takes aim at social science's nether regions . In: The Economist . ( economist.com [accessed November 1, 2018]).
  12. ^ Georg Rüschemeyer: Gender Studies: Really got on the dog . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed November 1, 2018]).
  13. ^ Christian Stöcker: Scandal among US scientists: Hitler, read feminist . In: Spiegel Online . October 7, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed November 2, 2018]).
  14. ↑ Comment by Sebastian Herrmann: Men in chains? In: sueddeutsche.de . 2018, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on November 2, 2018]).
  15. ↑ Marc ChéhabNews editor @ marcchehab: Social scientist with dog sex and "Mein Kampf" fooled . In: Tages-Anzeiger, Tages-Anzeiger . May 10, 2018, ISSN  1422-9994 ( tagesanzeiger.ch [accessed on November 2, 2018]).
  16. ↑ Peter Kuras: No hurdles . In: Friday . Retrieved January 3, 2019. 
  17. ^ Academic Freedom or Social Justice: What Kind of University is Portland State? January 6, 2019; Retrieved January 8, 2019 (American English).
  18. ^ Peter Boghossian: Another letter of support. This one from @RichardDawkins. Thank you.pic.twitter.com/LyTroLUcZC. In: @peterboghossian. January 8, 2019, accessed January 8, 2019 .
  19. ↑ Peter Boghossian: The time and thought going into these letters of support is really something. It's comforting to have thinkers like this in my corner. I'll be posting some of them in this thread. (1) pic.twitter.com/3TbJuUzl6t. In: @peterboghossian. January 7, 2019, accessed January 8, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Peter Boghossian: I have tremendous respect for @ JonHaidt's work. Having his support means a lot to me. In: @peterboghossian. January 12, 2019, accessed February 12, 2019 .
  21. ↑ Vojin Saša Vukadinović : «You will never be able to solve problems if you are only offended» . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . November 6, 2019, p. 36, 37 ( online [accessed November 11, 2019]).