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Comment by badRNG | Hacker News Reader

Boghossian is well-known for Sokal Hoaxes where he submits bogus papers to hundreds of journals (where it seems only obscure open access journals seem to actually publish) to discredit "feminism" and "the left" when they get published. The work is largely in the same vein as what you'll see out of Project Veritas.

He had a large following in the "anti-PC" and "anti-SJW" online subculture a few years back. It's been a long time since I've seen that name, interesting that I'm seeing it now where "PC" and "SJW" are largely swapped out with "woke" in discourse.

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The fact that hoax papers can so easily get through makes a mockery of the process. It shows there is next to no rigor on what is being submitted and it is just an echo chamber where ridiculous topics like “canine trans community discrimination” can masquerade as philosophy or science.

If you think that’s crazy, you would be surprised at the kind of stuff that can get into almost any journal on any subject. The point is that research fraud and poor vetting are a problem for many fields, not just the ones that you or I may dislike… so you have to wonder what would motivate someone to only point out their ideological enemies flaws.

> so you have to wonder what would motivate someone to only point out their ideological enemies flaws.

In the article it clearly states that he was surrounded by these illiberal ideologues and being harassed by them even before he started publishing these papers, simply for using critical thinking.

This makes it sound like it's equally bad in all fields, when in fact certain fields have a far far higher problem than others.

This statement seems correct but I have no data to back it up. Do you?

He's in the social sciences. It makes sense he'd focus on that. It is possible to publish nonsense papers in STEM journals too, hence the stories about "tortured phrases" that cropped up a few weeks ago. However there's no particular reason a philosophy professor would be aware of those journals or have any motivation to explore their integrity; naturally he will focus on journals about subjects he understands better than e.g. electronics or medicine.

I hope that's not his reasoning, because it is rather lazy. In order to know whether or not a phenomenon is a problem that matters you need to get an understanding of what is "normal" or not. Fraud is common in all fields in life. Someone who obsesses over the fraud present in one ideological wing of their field and nothing else would not be someone that I take seriously, personally.

The fact is his papers were rejected from highly respected journals. If I send an incorrect math proof to hundreds of math journals and one small open access journal decides to publish it, I haven't disproven math, nor would anyone think I had. It seems to me this falls in line with most of the anti-PC "scholarship" that does little more than confirm the biases of people who are primed to believe anything that discredits what they perceive as "PC", "SJW", or "woke."

> The fact that hoax papers can so easily get through makes a mockery of the process.

Not only get through but later on get cited in 'legit' papers.

Curious to read some of the papers that cited the fraudulent papers. Do you have any examples?

> submits bogus papers to obscure open access channels to discredit "feminism" and "the left" when they get published.

I think you missed the point.

> The work is largely in the same vein as what you'll see out of Project Veritas.

I'm not sure what you're point is here?

> "PC" and "SJW" are largely swapped out with "woke" in discourse.

Again - not sure what point you are trying to make here. Words and meanings change over time.

>I think you missed the point.

>I'm not sure what you're point is here?

The point is that Boghossian has built his brand over the past decade as an "anti-SJW" thought-leader and has used methods like the Sokal hoax to create stories that seem scandalous on the surface, and fall somewhere on the spectrum of dishonesty upon closer inspection, like Project Veritas often does (e.g. getting one of hundreds of your submissions published in an obscure open access journal doesn't prove what your readers think it proves on the surface.)

>Again - not sure what point you are trying to make here. Words and meanings change over time.

PC and SJW fell out of favor as time went on. The dishonesty in the discourse in the so-called "anti-PC" crowd around trigger warnings, "safe spaces", and gay rights is plainly obvious at this point, to the degree that it's hard to be taken seriously using these talking points, and terms like "PC" and "SJW" fell out of fashion accordingly. The discourse around so-called "wokeness" seems to also suffer from some of the same issues, though it may take time for that to become as obvious as it is now with the former.

> methods like the Sokal hoax to create stories that seem scandalous on the surface

No, it doesn't seem scandalous "on the surface." If you are in a field with so called "peer reviewed research" and someone can publish complete made up bullshit, then your entire field of study is garbage. You see these morons complain about his tactics, but you never see them fight back in kind. That's because you would never be able to get bullshit through the peer review process in physics, because it's, you know, real.

> If you are in a field with so called "peer reviewed research" and someone can publish complete made up bullshit, then your entire field of study is garbage.

The problem is, that's simply not what's happening. Boghossian isn't getting published in any large or reputable journals. He's getting articles published in tiny obscure open access journals. His paper has repeatedly, consistently failed peer review in academic journals.

If I published a logically incorrect math proof in some obscure journal no one has ever heard of, I haven't "disproved math." To claim I did so would be deeply dishonest.

I believe the point he is making, is that any old BS can be published, which is then picked up by the "woke" crowd and used in their citations...therefore highlighting that their citations are generally nonsense.

That point is incorrect given he's not meeting the standard of "published" in real journals.

To show their citations are generally nonsense he would have had to do some analysis to prove this. Having fraudulent papers accepted to low impact, open access journals doesn’t exactly prove much of anything in a general sense.

> The problem is, that's simply not what's happening. Boghossian isn't getting published in any large or reputable journals.

He got published in journals that are used to teach at his school.

> If I published a logically incorrect math proof in some obscure journal no one has ever heard of, I haven't "disproved math."

Yet another strawman. Nowhere in the article did the professor claim to have disproved an entire field of study.

If it was only obscure journals that no one reads, then I agree, but my understanding was that this is not the case.

The journals were:

- "Gender, Place and Culture" - Open Access - IF 1.5 - https://genderplaceandculture.wordpress.com/about/

- "Hypatia" - Open Access - IF 0.781 - https://hypatiaphilosophy.org

- "Fat Studies" - Open Access - IF 1.13 - https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ufts20/current

- "Cogent Social Sciences" - Open Access - IF 1.0 - https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/oass20/current

So yes, it appears he published his papers in small open access journals with little impact.

I believe there are some hints that towing certain ideological lines is more important for a successful submission in some academic journals than the merit of the paper itself.

For the reasons explained in the article and plain monetary interests.

>That's because you would never be able to get bullshit through the peer review process in physics,

are you sure about that?[1]. Some journal accepting a bullshit paper proves exactly one thing, that likely one individual or a small group of people had bad judgement. I'm not sure how one publicity stunt is supposed to destroy an entire field of research. That's just your own preconceived bias talking, and it's actually why these hoaxes are just stupid.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/22/nonsense-pap...

Did you read the article you linked? It has nothing to do with peer-reviewed publication in physics journals. It’s just another fake conference that automatically prints submitted abstracts (as do many real conferences). I get a different invitation every week or two to submit papers to these things. This week it’s some energy conference in Turkey (today was my “last chance” after ignoring their five previous emails). It means nothing.

their point is that a university hasn't really any reason to accommodate someone who publishes low quality research, which seems pretty straight forward.

Alan Sokal is well known for the Sokal Affair, which happened in the 90s, they copied the methodology. The media called it "Sokal Squared", which is a dumb name.

ALERT: Man with a POV writes an op-ed piece. Story at eleven.

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