# "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:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/161 "2019-03-12T08:33:38Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Well, ok, you were right about that. I don’t read those two sources and was not aware of that prior to this thread. > That topic might be worth researching. But to do research, it is by definition necessary that the researcher enter with an open mind. They must approach a question with a willingness to believe that the answer could be anything, and then let the results of the research or experiment lead them to the answer. There can be no research where the person has a dogma which dictates what the results must be before the research even begins. And the journals must be willing to publish the answer, regardless of what the answer is. > > _Gender, Place, and Culture_ and other such journals have a dogma: everything in America/Western Society, is racist, sexist, patriarchal, homophobic, ableist, etc… They will publish articles that agree with the dogma. They will not publish articles that contradict the dogma. So if ‘T. Lloro-Bidart’ had done an investigation into the language used by local media to to talk about squirrels and had failed to find any evidence of racism or sexism, her paper would not have been published. > > Young scholars entering the field are surely smart enough to understand which way the wind is blowing and they act accordingly. They quickly realize that to have a career, they must publish papers, and to publish papers, they must get results that agree with the prevailing dogma. Thus they learn to find racism, sexism, and all the rest in anything, and to avoid any skepticism about it. That’s why what’s going on here is not real research. That was the entire point of the hoax: “grievance studies” journals will publish anything if and only if the agrees with the dogma. Thanks for a well written response that brings this thread back on topic. I do wonder what happens to papers submitted that do not follow the correct dogma? Are there publications that show both sides to an issue? ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/162 "2019-03-12T10:27:03Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Are you saying that WITHOUT programs for diversity that we would not be seeing the higher numbers of non white male students? > > Do you READ your own cites? You said “My wife did her undergrad at Imperial College in the 90s and that was 25% women all in. Way, way back it was more like 1%.” > > So YOU are saying the numbers were going up anyways even WITHOUT expensive diversity programs. > > Oh maybe its helped - some. But look around. This isnt the 1950’s where you have white mobs standing at the gates of colleges stopping blacks. Good programs attract people - period. > > And the other thing - the groups have achieved their goals. For example, women are in college at record numbers at 55% over men. Shouldnt we be seeing a scaleback of diversity programs? Nope. They are only getting bigger. It’s good to see some passion for standards in higher education, urbanredneck, especially given it’s not your natural bailiwick, but I fear you may have a few more decades of righteous indignation ahead of you. Gender balance at the top level in science (ie the people who shape scientific progress and shape scientists in terms of training) remains appalling in academia and not great in industry. The bad news is that this appears to be a very intractable problem, because if the pipeline of talented female undergraduates is now there, and our diversity programmes are working to break down barriers to entry, what is stopping them from taking this path? ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/163 "2019-03-12T10:57:59Z")
> [@Busy\_Scissors](#): > > It’s good to see some passion for standards in higher education, urbanredneck, especially given it’s not your natural bailiwick, but I fear you may have a few more decades of righteous indignation ahead of you. Gender balance at the top level in science (ie the people who shape scientific progress and shape scientists in terms of training) remains appalling in academia and not great in industry. > The bad news is that this appears to be a very intractable problem, because if the pipeline of talented female undergraduates is now there, and our diversity programmes are working to break down barriers to entry, what is stopping them from taking this path? Maybe it’s not really a problem? Why does every field have to be 50/50 or have equal representation by all races, creeds, sexual orientations or whatever? Be honest. Is it better to have qualified people in this position regardless of gender or race or people brought in just to balance things out? As long as people are not excluded, why not just pick the best people? You say its “bad news” and a “very intractable problem”. Maybe it isnt? ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/164 "2019-03-12T13:01:08Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Maybe it’s not really a problem? Why does every field have to be 50/50 or have equal representation by all races, creeds, sexual orientations or whatever? > > Be honest. Is it better to have qualified people in this position regardless of gender or race or people brought in just to balance things out? As long as people are not excluded, why not just pick the best people? > > You say its “bad news” and a “very intractable problem”. Maybe it isnt? For diversity [particularly economic / class-based] it is definitively a problem because people are without doubt being excluded from education opportunity, leading to a mass squandering of potential which hurts us all, as a species. It doesn’t have to be 50/50 especially but science is an important, creative endeavour - and a large part of creativity is disruption, new thinking, different ideas. The risk of having a senior scientific class comprised exclusively of one group, who are training the next generation’s scientists to be a group that look and think just like themselves, is that you grow this massive intellectual monoculture. The more diverse this can be, then the stronger it can be, and the higher the fire of science will rise. This is increasingly a problem because the nature of scientific discovery changes - and it’s getting harder. We’ve plucked most of the low-lying fruit, the tap-ins, the open goals, and now largely understand the basics of how the world around us works. The layman’s idea of an Einstein or Gibbs-like figure working in isolation and conjuring major breakthroughs doesn’t really exist any more outside of mathematics (and even there it’s rare). Modern science is far more collaborative and cross-disciplinary - reflecting just how essential diversity of thought and ideas are to scientific progress. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/165 "2019-03-12T14:22:27Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > It’s true at public two-years schools as well. I know an administrator at a two-year college, and they got hit hard, as in layoffs and salary cuts. Two-year schools also don’t have TA’s available. > > If only it were a matter of people needing to look at lesser-known schools! Ask any kid going to a lesser-known state school. Or just click on the links in my previous posts. Please provide antecedents to your pronouns. What’s true at public two-year schools? What’s a matter of people needing to look at lesser-known schools? I may very well agree with you but I don’t know about what. > [@nelliebly](#): > > As for UVA. I’m not sure where you’re getting this $300 figure. The second link you posted, which is to a graph in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. shows this in-state tuition and fees rose from 10,119 in the 1998-1999 academic year to 17, 564 for the 2018-2019 academic year. > > The first link, which shows that funding for UVA has been a roller coaster since the 1990’s, has this to say on page 13(bolding mine): > > The state share of the cost of education has been declining annually since FY2002 (the > year of the highest state cost share). The student share of the cost of education in FY2018 > is estimated to be at 53% with the state contribution at 47%. This is 20 percentage points > lower than the target of 67% identified in the state’s tuition policy. Paragraph A of > Section 23.1-303 of the Higher Education Opportunity Act states that 67% of an > institution’s cost of education for Virginia students should be funded by the state > general fund. Further, the General Provisions of Chapter 836 of the 2017 Acts of the > Assembly, Item 4-2.01.b.3.b states that “the General Assembly shall seek to cover at > least 67% of educational costs.” **Based on the current average instructional cost, it > would take more than $660 million in additional state support to reach the policy goal, > but it could result in average tuition amounts that could be as much as $2,700 lower > than current levels, or about 1/3 less per student on average.** > > That doesn’t sound like a slight drop. It’s a l43-page-long report, though, so if you’d point me to the page where you got this $300 drop in state funding, I’d appreciate it. > [@p17](#): > > state funding per student in Virginia was reduced from $5,473 in 2000 to $5,139 in 2016 That’s for all students (including out of state) and for all schools. So maybe not so useful a number, which is why I wrote that maybe UVA saw a steeper decrease. And it looks like they did. They changed their budget website around so I was having trouble finding old budgets when I wrote last night, but I see now that state appropriations were $166.2M in 2000 and $152.8M in 2016. That’s $9.4k per undergrad, down from $13.3k. And I suspect jiggery pokery with grad/professional students will shift the numbers around somehow. [https://financialplanning.vpfinance.virginia.edu/budget-summary](https://financialplanning.vpfinance.virginia.edu/budget-summary) [https://ias.virginia.edu/university-stats-facts/enrollment](https://ias.virginia.edu/university-stats-facts/enrollment) The quote you found is about the state _share_, which can decrease even if the amount of state support per student goes up. And their numbers can’t be right anyway, because the state share and the student share don’t add to 100%. E.g., 20% of UVA’s Academic Division budget comes from endowment and gift spending. Although the accounting at larger school like this is tricky. What parts of the budget count as the “cost of education”? Which parts don’t? I don’t really know. But if we pretend that total cost = tuition/fees + state funds, then we’re looking at a total cost of $17.7k ($4.3 + $13.3) in 2000 and $25.1k ($15.7 + $9.4) in 2016. So that $11.4k increase in tuition covers a $7.4k increase in cost-to-educate and a $3.9k decrease in state support [some rounding error here]. That $7.4k obviously isn’t all administrative bloat. $17.7k to $25.1k is almost perfectly what we’d expect inflating against the CPI ($24.6k, September to September). Now the \*actual \*Academic Division budget increased from $750M to $1.64B. But that came with growth to the graduate and professional schools. But it’s still a per-student (_all_ students) increase, even after inflation. The main point of this exercise was to run through the numbers on a school with much greater tuition. Averaging the entire state returns small numbers that don’t jibe with flagship university costs. But, it still looks like in this isolated anecdote that most of the cost increase is not from any obvious administrative bloat unless they’re hiding it by decreasing other costs. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/166 "2019-03-12T21:19:50Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > It’s true at public two-years schools as well. I know an administrator at a two-year college, and they got hit hard, as in layoffs and salary cuts. Two-year schools also don’t have TA’s available. > > If only it were a matter of people needing to look at lesser-known schools! Ask any kid going to a lesser-known state school. Or just click on the links in my previous posts. > > As for UVA. I’m not sure where you’re getting this $300 figure. The second link you posted, which is to a graph in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. shows this in-state tuition and fees rose from 10,119 in the 1998-1999 academic year to 17, 564 for the 2018-2019 academic year. > > The first link, which shows that funding for UVA has been a roller coaster since the 1990’s, has this to say on page 13(bolding mine): > > The state share of the cost of education has been declining annually since FY2002 (the > year of the highest state cost share). The student share of the cost of education in FY2018 > is estimated to be at 53% with the state contribution at 47%. This is 20 percentage points > lower than the target of 67% identified in the state’s tuition policy. Paragraph A of > Section 23.1-303 of the Higher Education Opportunity Act states that 67% of an > institution’s cost of education for Virginia students should be funded by the state > general fund. Further, the General Provisions of Chapter 836 of the 2017 Acts of the > Assembly, Item 4-2.01.b.3.b states that “the General Assembly shall seek to cover at > least 67% of educational costs.” **Based on the current average instructional cost, it > would take more than $660 million in additional state support to reach the policy goal, > but it could result in average tuition amounts that could be as much as $2,700 lower > than current levels, or about 1/3 less per student on average.** > > That doesn’t sound like a slight drop. It’s a l43-page-long report, though, so if you’d point me to the page where you got this $300 drop in state funding, I’d appreciate it. OK, \*I \*posted > [@](#): > > So yeah, state funding cuts ARE the primary reason for tuition hikes. I know that’s hard for conservatives to swallow, but it doesn’t make it any less true. \*You \*then quoted that line and replied, > [@](#): > > On average, at state schools, including two-year schools. It’s a sentence fragment and thus unclear. I thought you were agreeing that state funding cuts had hit two-year schools as well. Then, based on context, I assumed you weren’t. On reflection, asking for clarification via completing the initial sentence would have been a better move. Respectfully, I’m done looking at UVA. I spent some time looking through the 43-page booklet because I was interested in the historical section, which gives an excellent overview of state funding and tuition. I found it informative and interesting, and for a time, I hoped Virginia was onto something that could be used in other states. I admire Virginia’s determination to keep in-state tuition at reasonable levels, but ultimately, UVA seems to have the same tuition issues as other universities. Ultimately, neither UVA nor any other single university proves or disproves what’s true generally about state funding and tuition. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/167 "2019-03-12T22:49:17Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Thanks for a well written response that brings this thread back on topic. > > I do wonder what happens to papers submitted that do not follow the correct dogma? > > Are there publications that show both sides to an issue? The question is what you mean by “Dogma” and what is its cause. If I try to get a paper published in a theoretical physics journal and my model assumes that high energy particles behave according to Newtonian laws instead of Relativistic laws, its going to get rejected immediately. Similarly a paper that claims that Jewish actions were to blame for the German defeat in WW1 is instantly rejected by a history journal, as will a paper that relies heavily on Pascals wager be summarily rejected from a Religious philosophy journal. Those who submitted such papers would likely claim that the field is dogmatic and only papers that fit the dogma are allowed to proceed. But really its just that the experts in the field aren’t going to accept a paper that ignores all of the previous understanding of the subject matter. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/168 "2019-03-12T23:04:00Z")
It shouldn’t be a surprise that there is publication bias. It doesn’t have to be overt - just that if you are a reviewer and a paper comes along that supports your priors, you naturally tend to treat it less skeptically than if you oppose them. I guarantee that if you write a paper that says gun laws have no effect on crime and you submit it to a journal that has anti-gun referees, they’re going to give it a hell of a lot more scrutiny than they would if the paper supported the idea that more gun laws equals less crime. They’re trying to be fair, but one paper sets off alarm bells in a way that the other won’t. This isn’t unique to the ‘sciences’ that deal in opinion and analysis, but it can even affect papers in the hard sciences. Hard science corrects for errors over time, however, because ultimately their theories are testable against reality. In ‘sciences’ like Psychology that’s not true, and so nonsense like Freudian psychoanalysis can hang around unrefuted for decades. Then it becomes little more than which group of ‘scientists’ are currently in political favor. Consensus rules over hard evidence, because there is no hard evidence. “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” - Richard Feynman ---
**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 13, 2019, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/169 "2019-03-13T06:13:47Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It shouldn’t be a surprise that there is publication bias. It doesn’t have to be overt - just that if you are a reviewer and a paper comes along that supports your priors, you naturally tend to treat it less skeptically than if you oppose them. > > I guarantee that if you write a paper that says gun laws have no effect on crime and you submit it to a journal that has anti-gun referees, they’re going to give it a hell of a lot more scrutiny than they would if the paper supported the idea that more gun laws equals less crime. They’re trying to be fair, but one paper sets off alarm bells in a way that the other won’t. > > This isn’t unique to the ‘sciences’ that deal in opinion and analysis, but it can even affect papers in the hard sciences. Hard science corrects for errors over time, however, because ultimately their theories are testable against reality. In ‘sciences’ like Psychology that’s not true, and so nonsense like Freudian psychoanalysis can hang around unrefuted for decades. Then it becomes little more than which group of ‘scientists’ are currently in political favor. Consensus rules over hard evidence, because there is no hard evidence. I don’t know about sociology, but in the areas where I have run a peer review process there are plenty of controversies, and no list of reviewers on one side or the other. A good editor will send out the paper to people who have published in the area and who don’t have conflicts of interest. And, if someone has a very strong opinion about the area, he or she probably won’t get the paper to review. The opinion might be for or against. Plus, the important thing that one looks at when reading the reviews is the comment section, not the scores. Do the comments point out real issues? Comments consisting of “this sucks” or “this rocks” are equally useless. And most papers of reasonable quality don’t get accepted as is, they get revise and resubmits. The revision, in some of the journals I review for, come with extensive responses to reviewers comments. Which reviewers can respond to on the next round. Sure there might be bias, but there are lots of journals to submit to. Good ones, which count more for tenure, are not going to play these games, either way. Because the last thing an editor wants is to have a bunch of letters pointing out obvious flaws in papers he or she likes and accepts. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2019, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/170 "2019-03-13T12:39:01Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > The question is what you mean by “Dogma” and what is its cause. > > If I try to get a paper published in a theoretical physics journal and my model assumes that high energy particles behave according to Newtonian laws instead of Relativistic laws, its going to get rejected immediately. > > Similarly a paper that claims that Jewish actions were to blame for the German defeat in WW1 is instantly rejected by a history journal, as will a paper that relies heavily on Pascals wager be summarily rejected from a Religious philosophy journal. > > Those who submitted such papers would likely claim that the field is dogmatic and only papers that fit the dogma are allowed to proceed. But really its just that the experts in the field aren’t going to accept a paper that ignores all of the previous understanding of the subject matter. Isnt your ability to get published also bvased on your research and findings? For example in your example on theoretical physics, if you run some tests and find out something that contradicts earlier research, why not get it published? Then its up to other people to run the same tests and come up with something different. For example we all agree their is something called “gravity” that follows certain rules, that sometimes the gravity does something different. Or for example, 2 + 2 = 4. Now the average person knows that true but a scientist or mathematician might prove there are times it isnt. Your next example on jews and WW1 history. I dont think people delve deep enough into history to learn all the little facts here and there. No the jews didnt cause german defeat in WW1. But there were some things some jews were doing behind the scenes. Regardless, a good journal should bring up such issues. The problem is one deals with being called anti-semantic. But you bring up a good point. When CAN you bring up issues that are not “ok”? To me, again, if you can show documentation of your research, that should be enough to get it published. But then I am an outsider. ---
**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 14, 2019, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/171 "2019-03-14T21:54:58Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Isnt your ability to get published also bvased on your research and findings? > > For example in your example on theoretical physics, if you run some tests and find out something that contradicts earlier research, why not get it published? Then its up to other people to run the same tests and come up with something different. The reason is that if you do an experiment disproving an important earlier finding, odds are you screwed something up. Rush to publish, and you’ll look like an idiot. (I know someone who did exactly this. He looked like an idiot.) A scientist is supposed to work as hard as possible to disprove his or her findings. Not to say that everything published is correct. A friend of mine found that a well known finding was incorrect while doing his physics dissertation. But the old finding was not well know enough for this to be worth a PhD, unluckily for him. > [@](#): > > For example we all agree their is something called “gravity” that follows certain rules, that sometimes the gravity does something different. Or for example, 2 + 2 = 4. Now the average person knows that true but a scientist or mathematician might prove there are times it isnt. FYI, 2 + 2 = 4 is not an experimental result, but can be proven using [Peanos’s Axioms](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PeanosAxioms.html). > [@](#): > > But you bring up a good point. When CAN you bring up issues that are not “ok”? To me, again, if you can show documentation of your research, that should be enough to get it published. > > But then I am an outsider. Just documentation isn’t enough. It had better make sense. The people who claimed they found Noah’s ark documented their research, but it was still crap. ---
**Author:** ![Taber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ac91a4/32.png) [@Taber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taber)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2019, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/172 "2019-03-14T22:49:37Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Google just did a study on the pay gap between men and women, and discovered that it wad actually reversed - women at Google get paid more than men for doing the same jobs. > > So can we just call it ‘mission accomplished’? Or are we going to keep going because as Hillary said, ‘The future is female.’? No, you’d give the men raises, like Google did. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2019, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/173 "2019-03-17T03:17:10Z")
I still like the idea that these people tried to expose the hypocrisy in the academic papers arena. It should make the periodicals watch what gets submitted more closely. I still think the whole idea of “publish or perish” is bad. I want a professor to devote time to their students and teaching over publishing papers. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2019, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/174 "2019-03-17T12:13:20Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![wguy123](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wguy123/32/3161_2.png) [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2019, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/175 "2019-03-18T15:32:08Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I still like the idea that these people tried to expose the hypocrisy in the academic papers arena. It should make the periodicals watch what gets submitted more closely. > > I still think the whole idea of “publish or perish” is bad. I want a professor to devote time to their students and teaching over publishing papers. There are folks that are called “research faculty” that don’t even teach (they do mentor grad students). Your second paragraph is very immaterial to them. There are also instructors/clinical faculty (naming conventions do vary between universities) that focus mainly on teaching and do very little research or publishing. It seems you like instructors and don’t like tenured faculty. Publishing is how you get research results out. ---
**Author:** ![HookerChemical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@HookerChemical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HookerChemical)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2019, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/176 "2019-03-18T21:47:39Z")
The Sokol Squared papers do little to demonstrate that some academic journals need more rigor when reviewing and publishing papers. This isn’t news. The hoax says no more about “grievance studies” than “Get me off Your Fucking Email List” says about computer science. (Seriously, [read the first paragraph](http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf), review the flow chart, and check out the scatterplot. It’s an amazing paper.) [Vox](https://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam) lists other hoax/scam papers, including several in medicine or hard science, in their discussion of the GmoYFEL paper. There was no effort to compare the acceptance rate for the bogus papers in “grievance studies” to the acceptance rates for other fields. If they had wanted to do an actual study to demonstrate that “grievance studies” are not legitimate, they would have prepared papers for a comparable field (i.e. “soft” science like history or sociology) and attempted to publish those as well. The hoaxers know this criticism because two of them have been on the receiving end of it before when they published a hoax paper on the “conceptual penis” and concluded that the field of gender studies is flawed. The three hoaxers targeted fields they don’t like and spent a year proving that they can make up a good enough fake paper to fool low influence journals sometimes, but did nothing to prove that the targeted fields are more susceptible to this type of scam than other fields. The journals in the Sokol Squared project weren’t prestigious or influential. The dog park paper was published in _Gender, Place, and Culture_, a journal with an SJR rank of 1.1. _Nature_ has an a rank of 17.8, and _Science_ has 14.1. _CA- A Cancer Journal for Clinicians_ blows them (and everybody else) out of the water with a rank of 61.8. The authors of the hoax characterize GPC as “a highly ranked journal that leads the field in feminist geography. That’s pretty specific, and it’s pretty disingenuous to claim that they’re highly ranked. It’s like me claiming that I’m the best SDMB member named after a chemical company who lived in Reno. SJR doesn’t categorize GPC as one related to geography, Among the gender studies journals, it ranks 9th. The top ranked journal gender studies has a SJR of 2.4, so it’s not a highly influential field to begin with. Broadening the field a little, we take a look a look at social sciences journals, and we see GPC ranked 550. Maybe if gender studies are your thing, you’ve heard of the journal, but I think classifying it as prestigious is misleading. The other journals that took the bait aren’t much different. _Fat Studies_ has a score of less than 1. Same with _Sexuality and Culture_, _Sex Roles_, _The Journal of Poetry Therapy_, and _Affilia_. About 2/3 of all journals ranked have a score greater than 1. The journals targeted were in the bottom 1/3 of journals. _Hypatia_, characterized by the hoaxers as a “feminist philosophy titan” has a score of 0.525. The hoaxers aren’t even trying to be honest with their representation of the journals. They’ve been similarly slippery and misleading statements in the past, such as saying that they didn’t pay to publish the conceptual penis paper. It later came out that the journal did require payment, but it was paid by a sponsor. Technically, the authors didn’t pay, so their statement was completely truthful amiright? ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/177 "2019-03-19T03:29:19Z")
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? ---
**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 19, 2019, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/178 "2019-03-19T04:00:01Z")
> [@HookerChemical](#): > > The hoax says no more about “grievance studies” than “Get me off Your Fucking Email List” says about computer science. (Seriously, [read the first paragraph](http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf), review the flow chart, and check out the scatterplot. It’s an amazing paper.) [Vox](https://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam) lists other hoax/scam papers, including several in medicine or hard science, in their discussion of the GmoYFEL paper. > … > The journals in the Sokol Squared project weren’t prestigious or influential. The dog park paper was published in _Gender, Place, and Culture_, a journal with an SJR rank of 1.1. _Nature_ has an a rank of 17.8, and _Science_ has 14.1. _CA- A Cancer Journal for Clinicians_ blows them (and everybody else) out of the water with a rank of 61.8. The authors of the hoax characterize GPC as “a highly ranked journal that leads the field in feminist geography. That’s pretty specific, and it’s pretty disingenuous to claim that they’re highly ranked. It’s like me claiming that I’m the best SDMB member named after a chemical company who lived in Reno. > > SJR doesn’t categorize GPC as one related to geography, Among the gender studies journals, it ranks 9th. The top ranked journal gender studies has a SJR of 2.4, so it’s not a highly influential field to begin with. 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? ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/179 "2019-03-19T06:06:34Z")
> [@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? ‘Not highly influential’ doesn’t mean ‘of no importance’, and even ‘of no importance’ doesn’t mean ‘meaningless nonsense’. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645/180 "2019-03-19T10:13:16Z")
> [@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? The US education system seems very marketised to me, looking from the outside. So the idea that gender studies departments and their ilk are existing on some sort of state subsidy doesn’t sound credible. They are there because people want to study those subjects - if people did not, they would not be there, as there would be no tuition fees to support them. I mean you can argue whether or not people should want to study them, if they truly grasped what a charade of learning they represent, but the bottom line does appear that the demand is there [plus these classroom courses are cheap to run]. It’s true that some subjects are integral to the academy, so are protected from this free market picture - ie if physics starts to lose money, goes through a few lean years of recruitment, then no serious place of learning is closing the physics dept (although an unserious place might well do so). But I don’t think feminist geography or grievance studies are in that category. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sokal-squared-project-exposes-fraud-in-academia/830645.md?page=10)