"Sokal Squared" or "Grievance Studies Affair"--a conversation with Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose

In 1996, Dr. Alan Sokal, a physics professor, wanted to test the intellectual rigor of “postmodern cultural studies.” To do so, he wrote an article titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.”
This article was full of absolute nonsense—but Dr. Sokal believed it would be accepted by an academic journal anyway. And he was right.
This hoax—called the “Sokal Affair” or “Sokal Hoax”—caused an uproar in academia because it questioned the validity of social science commentary on scientific inquiry.
Fast forward to 2017.
Three academics, editor Helen Pluckrose, mathematician James A. Lindsay, and philosopher Peter Boghossian, did something similar but bigger. And with a similar purpose—they wanted to test the intellectual rigor of academic journals in the fields of gender, queer, race, and fat studies—what they call as a whole, “grievance studies.”
They wanted to see if they could produce absurd articles using the catch-phrases and biases they observed in cultural studies academic journals—and get them published.
Of the 20 nonsense articles the trio wrote, 7 passed peer review and were published, and one even received recognition. Seven more were on the verge of publication before their hoax was uncovered.
This academic project has been dubbed “Sokal Squared” as a nod to Dr. Alan Sokal’s hoax article from 1996.
While it may sound like this topic is only of interest to academia, the authors believe it is relevant—in fact, crucial—for everyone to understand the implications of what is going on in universities and academic journals because the knowledge produced there affects us all.
We spoke with all three of the “Sokal Squared” hoaxers, or “academic whistleblowers” as they would say, for today’s program.
We should have the extended conversations with our guests posted by the evening of March 2, 2019.