# "Sokal Squared" project exposes fraud in academia **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 6, 2019, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645 "2019-03-06T19:36:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/181 "2019-03-19T12:02:57Z")
Has anyone linked the [Slate article](https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/grievance-studies-hoax-not-academic-scandal.html) on this yet? It’s quite informative. > [@](#): > > Let’s analyze the hoax a bit more carefully. The team wrote up 21 bogus papers altogether. (The essay starts by saying there were only 20; according to Lindsay, that’s because two of the papers were largely similar to one another.) Of those 21, two-thirds never were accepted for publication. The Areo essay dwells on several papers that had been rejected outright, including one suggesting that white students should be enchained for the sake of pedagogy, and another proposing that self-pleasure could be a form of violence against women. They take it as a sign of intellectual decay that such papers managed to elicit respectful feedback from reviewers, even short of publication. (One of those has since explained that he was just trying to be helpful.) But I think we can all agree that it’s neither telling nor newsworthy when a bogus paper fails to get into an academic journal, however offensive or inane it might have been. > > […] > > That leaves us with three more examples of the hoax. These were touted as the most revealing ones—the headline grabbers, the real slam dunks: the dog-rape paper, the dildo paper, the breastaurant research. They also share a common trait: Each was presented as a product of empirical research, based on original data. The dog-rape study is supposed to have resulted from nearly 1,000 hours of observation at three dog parks in southeast Portland. The dildo paper pretends to draw from multihour interviews with 13 men—eight straight, two bisexual, three gay—about their sexual behaviors. And the breastaurant research claims to have its basis in a two-year-long project carried out in northern Florida, involving men whose educational backgrounds, ages, and marital statuses were duly recorded and reported. > > […] > > It’s true that Pluckrose, Lindsay, and Boghossian tricked some journals into putting out made-up data, but this says nothing whatsoever about the fields they chose to target. One could have run this sting on almost any empirical discipline and returned the same result. **We know from long experience that expert peer review offers close to no protection against outright data fraud** , whether in the field of gender studies or cancer research, psychology or plant biology, crystallography or condensed matter physics. Even shoddy paste-up jobs with duplicated images and other slacker fakes have made their way to print and helped establish researchers’ careers. So what if these hoaxers did the same for fun? These examples haven’t hoodwinked anyone with sophistry or satire but with a simple fabrication of results. Keep that in mind - this isn’t “obviously bullshit methodology”. It’s _data fraud_. That’s kind of a different story altogether. The papers being hoodwinked believed that fraudulent data was real. That’s a systemic problem _everywhere_ (click through to Slate and you’ll find plenty of links of examples). Here’s an actual sociologist [weighing in on the dog rape study](https://twitter.com/lakens/status/1047454051661762560), and his conclusion is that the study would be quite interesting if it weren’t fabricated. If I’m allowed to outright fabricate data, thousands of hours of interviews, for example, chances are good I can publish a bogus study in just about any field. Speaking of fabricated data… [One of the authors is in hot water about these studies, because they breached ethical guidelines](https://www.chronicle.com/article/Proceedings-Start-Against/245431). Turns out “fabricating and submitting data to journals to make a point” is still fabricating data. The Slate article then goes into detail on the potential motivations of the authors, and notes that they’re both quite ardent antifeminists (and, as should come as no surprise when talking about antifeminists, are kind of douchebags about it). But the important thing here is that this “scandal” is nowhere near as big a deal as some people are making it out to be. A handful of papers, most of which are based on fraudulent data (not obvious bullshit like “Get me off your fucking mailing list”, just data that’s not actually real!) passed peer review in low-tier sociological journals. And we’re supposed to conclude from that that, as the OP states, “these journals will publish just about anything as long as it fits into their mindset no matter how crazy the paper is”? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/182 "2019-03-19T12:43:25Z")
I dunno if I’m all in with the nickname of the trollery, IIRC the original Sokal paper was a one-shot thing, not an attempt at a takedown of the whole ecosystem of a particular branch of sociological publishing. And AFAIK he did not introduce fake research in the trolling attempt. > [@Ruken](#): > > No hypocrisy was exposed. It’s not the journals’ job to identify fraud. And teaching-focused schools are available for the students who want them; you’re welcome to attend if you’re able to get in. Yeah, I fail to see the “hypocrisy”. ISTM as happens so often the word doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it means. As to how people keep insisting on the notion that Univerisites should only exist to teach people job skills, that is a long running battle. > [@Urbanredneck](#): > > So while its not exactly the same isnt the same thought, someone writes a paper claiming this or that and the next person can write in and prove they are wrong? That is how it should be. Heck that’s the point of publishing. It has been questioned earlier in the thread _“Uh… well, what if I wrote a paper proving there is NOT a gender-identity problem with this? Would they publish THAT, huh?”_ …well, in an unpoisoned-well environment, maybe we \*could \*have run that experiment, by presenting real studies that indeed proved the contrary to the subject’s academic orthodoxy. Then we could argue that they’ll just publish whatever fits their preconceptions. Now Og knows how long it will take to be able to do so without everyone being on the defensive. Look, I get that some people believe the fields of study themselves are worthless obvious BS. The way to address that is to show with real research that they are just wrong. Not to seek to convict them of silliness in the court of public opinion. ---
**Author:** ![HookerChemical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@HookerChemical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HookerChemical)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/183 "2019-03-19T16:47:59Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > If the line of defense amounts to “The whole field of gender studies and all journals therein are of no importance”, it kind of raises the question of why the field exists in the first place. Why would taxpayers want to spend money on gender studies departments at public universities, if the research is supposed to be trivial? Why would students seeking real majors such as science or engineering at any university want to see some of their tuition money diverted to funding meaningless nonsense? My argument is that the hoaxers are misrepresenting the experiment and the journals that were fooled by the hoax, and the basis for their decision to target “grievance studies” journals. The hoax does nothing to prove that “grievance studies” journals accept hoax papers at a rate more than any other field. The hoax had no comparison on which to base that conclusion because they deliberately did not target journals in fields that they did not have a grievance with. “Get me off Your Fucking Email List” is only one of many hoax papers that have been accepted by journals in other fields, in this case, Computer Science. Others have been mentioned in this thread already, including geology and medicine, which are “hard” sciences and seem to be presumed to be immune to this type of falsification by the hoaxers. The hoaxers represent the journals as influential. They’re not. _Hypatia_ is not “feminist philosophy titan." Characterizing GPC as “highly ranked” is misleading at best and true only because it’s the highest ranked on a list that may only consist of GPC. The hoaxers did not target influential papers. By and large, they targeted the bottom 1/3 of influential journals. They targeted niche journals with niche articles tailored to sucker journals in those niches. Finally, the hoaxers targeted “grievance studies” because they perceive a threat from the field of study. That implies that the field has strong influence, but that’s simply not the case, as seen in the influence scores. Why the field should exist is another debate entirely and something that the hoax does not speak to. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/184 "2019-03-19T21:25:39Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Quick point: I’m not an academic. However the closest I’ve ever done to this is decades ago their was a magazine called “Discovery” from “The Discovery Channel” on TV. They once published an article claiming something like 100,000 acres of trees are cut down every year in the USA for farmland. > > Well I wrote in and countered that assumption. They not only printed my letter but admitted that after double checking, that they were wrong and the previous point was an wrong. They had gotten that info from a bad source without double checking if it was true or not. They said they double checked by calling the Washington DC interior department itself. > > So while its not exactly the same isnt the same thought, someone writes a paper claiming this or that and the next person can write in and prove they are wrong? Discover (not Discovery) magazine is not a journal of the type described here. It is a popular science magazine. The difference is that journal submissions are full papers, magazine submissions like for Discover (and also Scientific American) are pitched. That is, you send the editor a proposal. [Pitch guildelines.](http://discovermagazine.com/magazine/about/2014/11/editorial-faq#q8). I’d be very surprised if Discover had any sort of relevance ranking, and if you even referenced an article in it (except perhaps to show what the public is thinking about) you’d get laughed out of the process. And it sure has hell wouldn’t count for tenure. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/185 "2019-03-19T21:39:58Z")
Perhaps if you are an academic in one of the “hard” sciences, like Communications. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2019, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/186 "2019-03-20T05:15:44Z")
> [@Budget Player Cadet](#): > > Keep that in mind - this isn’t “obviously bullshit methodology”. It’s _data fraud_. That’s kind of a different story altogether. The papers being hoodwinked believed that fraudulent data was real. That’s a systemic problem _everywhere_ (click through to Slate and you’ll find plenty of links of examples). Here’s an actual sociologist [weighing in on the dog rape study](https://twitter.com/lakens/status/1047454051661762560), and his conclusion is that the study would be quite interesting if it weren’t fabricated. If I’m allowed to outright fabricate data, thousands of hours of interviews, for example, chances are good I can publish a bogus study in just about any field. > > Speaking of fabricated data… [One of the authors is in hot water about these studies, because they breached ethical guidelines](https://www.chronicle.com/article/Proceedings-Start-Against/245431). Turns out “fabricating and submitting data to journals to make a point” is still fabricating data. Concerning the attempt to punish Boghossian, there’s [a roundup of several responses here](http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/08/peter-boghossian-psu-misconduct-hoax-stu). The main points being, first, that the hoax made a certain segment of academia look ridiculous, and some of those academics want to lash out, as opposed to actually addressing the issues that were exposed and improving the intellectual standards of their work. Second, the attempt to punish Boghossian constitutes a misuse of the Institutional Review Board. The original purpose of IRBs was to protect experimental subjects against techniques that were harmful and abusive. They were a response to some well-known experiments that were harmful and abusive. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2019, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/187 "2019-03-20T06:18:25Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Concerning the attempt to punish Boghossian, there’s [a roundup of several responses here](http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/08/peter-boghossian-psu-misconduct-hoax-stu). The main points being, first, that the hoax made a certain segment of academia look ridiculous, and some of those academics want to lash out, as opposed to actually addressing the issues that were exposed and improving the intellectual standards of their work. > > Second, the attempt to punish Boghossian constitutes a misuse of the Institutional Review Board. The original purpose of IRBs was to protect experimental subjects against techniques that were harmful and abusive. They were a response to some well-known experiments that were harmful and abusive. Back when people were working on proving programs correct, there was a paper which examined proofs in several published papers and found bugs in all the proofs. That’s the way to do it. The authors did not create a paper with buggy proofs and try to get it published. That’s not the way to do it. If these people looked at papers published in these journals and outlined ones that were idiotic (probably pretty easy) no one would be having a fit. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/188 "2019-03-24T03:43:08Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > You did not give _the_ definition of fraud. You gave a definition that you prefer as it works to your advantage, but it is not one that anyone would accept. I said fraud is “the crime of getting money by deceiving people”, which is a definition that [the Cambridge Dictionary](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fraud) accepts. > [@Voyager](#): > > Sure Cohen is committing fraud. It’s protected to some extent by the first amendment. No one is saying these people should be arrested, or even sued. But it is fraud. And definitely unethical. So in other to be able to slap “fraud” and “unethical” claims on Pluckrose, Lindsay, and Boghossian, you expand the terms to cover people and situations that almost no one would ever label fraud or unethical. When _Borat_ was released, it was broadly popular with critics and audiences, and I did not read any reviews calling it an unethical fraud. Heck, plenty of experiments in psychology, behavioral economics, and other fields involve the researchers trying to trick subjects into believing that the experiment is measuring one thing when they are actually measuring something else. Is that fraud and unethical too? If so, our definitions are far apart. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. ---
**Author:** ![Trafalgar\_Laura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trafalgar_laura/32/2907_2.png) [@Trafalgar\_Laura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trafalgar_Laura)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/189 "2019-03-24T04:43:18Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I said fraud is “the crime of getting money by deceiving people”, which is a definition that [the Cambridge Dictionary](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fraud) accepts. Yes, and if you scroll down further: > [@Cambridge Dictionary](#): > > “someone who deceives people by saying that they are someone or something that they are not” > “a person or thing that is not what it claims or pretends to be” Some definitions mention money, or that fraud is used “often to get money,” but it’s not a prerequisite. As for the fake papers… there’s a lot of bullshit in academia, there’s a lot of bullshit in everything. If they submitted that many papers, to that many journals, and these PhD holders still couldn’t get their obfuscation papers published in most of them… it seems to me that there’s pretty good standards up already. The journals that did accept him were small, relatively non-influential and possibly in need of submitted publishable material, even if it’s rather weird. And, as others have pointed out, sometimes exploration of things that seem obviously stupid to a casual observer actually have underlying value when you truly examine them. These papers might not have been ‘truly examined’ by that metric, but that’s not entirely the journal’s job (more the intellectual community, which will read and respond to or contradict the papers) annnnnnd… there still were more journals than not which wouldn’t publish these false papers. If you set up an obvious joke twenty times a day, eventually you’ll get someone to ask you “What’s updog?” in response. Doesn’t mean you’re clever. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/190 "2019-03-24T12:35:04Z")
Submitting fraudulent data to a journal is academic fraud. No native English speaker is confused about this. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/191 "2019-03-24T17:49:38Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I said fraud is “the crime of getting money by deceiving people”, which is a definition that [the Cambridge Dictionary](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fraud) accepts. _A_ definition, sure. But not _the_ definition. Not the only definition. Like saying that the definition of “Right” is the diametric opposite of left, and not accepting that it also means correct. You are claiming that it is wrong to call these acts fraud, and you are choosing only to cherry pick a single entry of a dictionary definition in order to justify that, while ignoring the other definitions in the very same cite. > [@](#): > > So in other to be able to slap “fraud” and “unethical” claims on Pluckrose, Lindsay, and Boghossian, you expand the terms to cover people and situations that almost no one would ever label fraud or unethical. When _Borat_ was released, it was broadly popular with critics and audiences, and I did not read any reviews calling it an unethical fraud. It was certainly fraud. He was not representing the truth of who he was and what he was about. Unethical is in the eye of the beholder, I personally wasn’t a big fan of it. But, once again, because _you_ did not see anyone calling it fraud or unethical doesn’t mean that there were not those calling it just that. Here’s just a few links to stories of people suing Cohen for fraud. [https://www.ajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/lawmaker-duped-sacha-baron-cohen-this-why-trump-won/t4MGGDybLya3zuId1miJqM/](https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/lawmaker-duped-sacha-baron-cohen-this-why-trump-won/t4MGGDybLya3zuId1miJqM/) > [@](#): > > The makers of this film fraudulently induced me in participating in bogus self-defense and anti-terrorism training > … > It is clear the makers of this film intended to deceive me in an attempt to undermine the American conservative political movement; therefore, I have sought legal counsel to challenge this illegal and unethical behavior and plan on taking action if and when any of this fraudulently obtained footage of me is used [https://www.indiewire.com/2018/09/roy-moore-sues-sacha-baron-cohen-95-million-who-is-america-1202000836/](https://www.indiewire.com/2018/09/roy-moore-sues-sacha-baron-cohen-95-million-who-is-america-1202000836/) > [@](#): > > Moore is suing Showtime, CBS, and Cohen for fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and defamation. Despite the fact that Moore signed a release before the taping of the interview took place, he maintains the release was signed on fraudulent grounds. [https://www.smudailycampus.com/news/borat-lawsuit-is-bogus-frat-boys-should-get-over-it](https://www.smudailycampus.com/news/borat-lawsuit-is-bogus-frat-boys-should-get-over-it) > [@](#): > > Now they are both suing 20th Century Fox and other production companies, as well as people involved in the picture for fraud and false light among other reasons. Heck, plenty of experiments in psychology, behavioral economics, and other fields involve the researchers trying to trick subjects into believing that the experiment is measuring one thing when they are actually measuring something else. Is that fraud and unethical too? If so, our definitions are far apart. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. [/QUOTE] Psychology experiments have very strict controls specifically for that reason. If you have ever participated in one, then you would also know that at the end, they are required to debrief you, and to tell you what the experiment was actually about. They also just use statistical data from their observations, not identifying individual behaviors. People also know that they are participating in a psychology study. They may not know exactly what it is about, but they are aware that they are being studying as to their reactions to various environments and stimuli, they know that there may be things that they do not expect. They know that their identities are being protected. They know that when this is all said and done, they won’t go home to their family who will make fun of them for being tricked into saying an ethnic slur. If you are really trying to compare this to a psychology experiment, then you need to show that they followed the protocols required for psychology experiments. Did they? I guess you’ll just have to disagree with pretty much the entire world, because the very narrow definition that you have picked here is not how anyone else would use it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2019, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/192 "2019-03-25T01:29:54Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Psychology experiments have very strict controls specifically for that reason. If you have ever participated in one, then you would also know that at the end, they are required to debrief you, and to tell you what the experiment was actually about. They also just use statistical data from their observations, not identifying individual behaviors. People also know that they are participating in a psychology study. They may not know exactly what it is about, but they are aware that they are being studying as to their reactions to various environments and stimuli, they know that there may be things that they do not expect. They know that their identities are being protected. They know that when this is all said and done, they won’t go home to their family who will make fun of them for being tricked into saying an ethnic slur. > > If you are really trying to compare this to a psychology experiment, then you need to show that they followed the protocols required for psychology experiments. Did they? > > I guess you’ll just have to disagree with pretty much the entire world, because the very narrow definition that you have picked here is not how anyone else would use it. Keerect. One of my daughter’s PhDs is in psychology, and she knew the IPRB rules intimately. In any case you’d hope that academicians would have higher standards than comedians. These three clowns clearly do not. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645.md?page=9)