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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sokal affair | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:31:07.214905+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Criticism of social sciences === Sociologist Stephen Hilgartner, chairman of Cornell University's science and technology studies department, wrote "The Sokal Affair in Context" (1997), comparing Sokal's hoax to "Confirmational Response: Bias Among Social Work Journals" (1990), an article by William M. Epstein published in Science, Technology, & Human Values. Epstein used a similar method to Sokal's, submitting fictitious articles to real academic journals to measure their response. Though much more systematic than Sokal's work, it received scant media attention. Hilgartner argued that the "asymmetric" effect of the successful Sokal hoax compared with Epstein's experiment cannot be attributed to its quality, but that "[t]hrough a mechanism that resembles confirmatory bias, audiences may apply less stringent standards of evidence and ethics to attacks on targets that they are predisposed to regard unfavorably." As a result, according to Hilgartner, though competent in terms of method, Epstein's experiment was largely muted by the more socially accepted social work discipline he critiqued, while Sokal's attack on cultural studies, despite lacking experimental rigor, was accepted. Hilgartner also argued that Sokal's hoax reinforced the views of well-known pundits such as George Will and Rush Limbaugh, so that his opinions were amplified by media outlets predisposed to agree with his argument. The Sokal Affair extended from academia to the public press. Anthropologist Bruno Latour, who was criticized in Fashionable Nonsense, described the scandal as a "tempest in a teacup". Retired Northeastern University mathematician and social scientist Gabriel Stolzenberg wrote essays criticizing the statements of Sokal and his allies, arguing that they insufficiently grasped the philosophy they criticized, rendering their criticism meaningless. In Social Studies of Science, Bricmont and Sokal responded to Stolzenberg, denouncing his representations of their work and criticizing his commentary about the "strong programme" of the sociology of science. Stolzenberg replied in the same issue that their critique and allegations of misrepresentation were based on misreadings. He advised readers to slowly and skeptically examine the arguments of each party, bearing in mind that "the obvious is sometimes the enemy of the true". In her 1998 article "The Sokal Hoax: At Whom Are We Laughing?", philosopher of science Mara Beller compared the "awe" physicists feel for Bohr's obscurity to their "contempt" for Derrida's density.
== Influence ==
=== Sociological follow-up study === In 2009, Cornell sociologist Robb Willer performed an experiment in which undergraduate students read Sokal's paper and were told either that it was written by another student or that it was by a famous academic. He found that students who believed the paper's author was a high-status intellectual rated it better in quality and intelligibility.
=== Sokal III === In October 2021, the scholarly journal Higher Education Quarterly published a bogus article "authored" by "Sage Owens" and "Kal Avers-Lynde III". The initials stand for "Sokal III". The Quarterly retracted the article.
== See also ==
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Bibliography ===
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Alan Sokal Articles on the Social Text Affair Alan Sokal's own page with very extensive links; includes the original article Original hoax article (HTML)