Ed The Peter Boghossian Affair: Professor resigns from woke university: What now?

[smartcooky]

https://www.economist.com/united-st...ghlights-pressures-within-academia-to-conform

In 2018 he and two authors tried to publish 20 fake papers, in order to expose what they saw as a willingness to publish anything that used the right jargon.​

Regardless of how noble you might think your cause is, there is no valid justification whatsoever for publishing fake papers and/or research. Doing so brings you and your university discredit, and violates your university's trust in your integrity - it puts you in the same scumbaggery class as Andrew Wakefield.

If you want to expose something, write and submit a proper paper exposing it. If it is published you have the publicity you've been wanting; if it is not published. you have ammunition for your argument.

"Part of the problem, says Bruce Gilley, one of Mr Boghossian’s supporters at PSU, is the “diversity industrial complex” within college administrations, that need to justify their existence."​

Looks like someone's buzzword generator has been in overdrive

Seriously, take a good look at yourself Mr Gilley. You complain about "the right jargon", and then you come up with a bull-**** term like “diversity industrial complex”
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[d4m10n]

If you want to expose something, write and submit a proper paper exposing it.

How exactly could one expose the tendency of certain journals to publish unserious nonsense without directly testing the hypothesis itself?

 

[smartcooky]

How exactly could one expose the tendency of certain journals to publish unserious nonsense without directly testing the hypothesis itself?

Did you actually read what I posted, I mean, at all?

 

[d4m10n]

Did you actually read what I posted, I mean, at all?

Yes; it was a series of moral assertions offered without analysis as if from a pulpit.

 

[smartcooky]

Yes; it was a series of moral assertions offered without analysis as if from a pulpit.

You actually snipped out the bit that would have answered the question you asked in post 154.

 

[d4m10n]

You actually snipped out the bit that would have answered the question you asked in post 154.

"If you want to expose something, write and submit a proper paper exposing it."

Exposing it how, exactly?

Are there any historical examples of the paper you propose here?

 

[Cain]

https://www.economist.com/united-st...ghlights-pressures-within-academia-to-conform

In 2018 he and two authors tried to publish 20 fake papers, in order to expose what they saw as a willingness to publish anything that used the right jargon.​

Regardless of how noble you might think your cause is, there is no valid justification whatsoever for publishing fake papers and/or research. Doing so brings you and your university discredit, and violates your university's trust in your integrity - it puts you in the same scumbaggery class as Andrew Wakefield.

If you want to expose something, write and submit a proper paper exposing it. If it is published you have the publicity you've been wanting; if it is not published. you have ammunition for your argument.

"Part of the problem, says Bruce Gilley, one of Mr Boghossian’s supporters at PSU, is the “diversity industrial complex” within college administrations, that need to justify their existence."​

Looks like someone's buzzword generator has been in overdrive

Seriously, take a good look at yourself Mr Gilley. You complain about "the right jargon", and then you come up with a bull-**** term like “diversity industrial complex”
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"Diversity industrial complex" is a play on Eisenhower's famous "military industrial complex"; maybe this is unclear to non-Americans.

I support fake submissions to fake journals. The famous Sokal Hoax was an old-school leftist exposing fashionable nonsense.

 

[lionking]

"Diversity industrial complex" is a play on Eisenhower's famous "military industrial complex"; maybe this is unclear to non-Americans.

I support fake submissions to fake journals. The famous Sokal Hoax was an old-school leftist exposing fashionable nonsense.

Indeed. Sokol did far more good than harm by getting his laughable submission published. Journals started to become more responsible rather than simply publishing every document and collecting fees. It looks like irresponsible journals are still thick on the ground though.

 

[d4m10n]

Premise: You believe Thing A is bad!

Step 1: Write a paper explaining why you believe Thing A is bad

Writing a paper with the premise that journals like Social Text^WP are too quick to publish nonsense (and of course that is bad) isn't particularly demonstrative, in my view. Even if you point to several nonsensical papers which have slipped through, everyone involved will solemnly affirm they are doing proper postmodern deconstruction.

To truly demonstrate that selected journals are too quick to publish nonsense, you have to make up some utter nonsense, add the right buzzwords, and get it published in those journals. Then no one can say "You just don't understand how postmodern deconstruction works!"

Sokol did far more good than harm by getting his laughable submission published. Journals started to become more responsible rather than simply publishing every document and collecting fees. It looks like irresponsible journals are still thick on the ground though.

Precisely! (IIRC, no one tried to cancel him at the time.)

 

[smartcooky]

Writing a paper with the premise that journals like Social Text^WP are too quick to publish nonsense (and of course that is bad) isn't particularly demonstrative, in my view. Even if you point to several nonsensical papers which have slipped through, everyone involved will solemnly affirm they are doing proper postmodern deconstruction.

To truly demonstrate that selected journals are too quick to publish nonsense, you have to make up some utter nonsense, add the right buzzwords, and get it published in those journals. Then no one can say "You just don't understand how postmodern deconstruction works!"

Publishing nonsense is what disinformation pedlars like Andrew Wakefield did, and he was rightly stripped of his doctoral license for what he did.

I put this in the same category as that bastard Wakefield - publishing false or misleading information that you KNOW is untrue, under cover of academic privilege. Doing this destroys trust in that person's academic work and brings the whole of academia into disrepute. For mine, it calls into question everything else he has published - I would certainly never again trust anything such a person published in the future - once trust is broken, there is no redemption.

Publishing bollocks, and then coming along later and justifying it by claiming that you "were trying to make a point", is the academic equivalent of politicians who have made inappropriate or racist remarks and then walked them back by claiming they "were only joking" .

They lied then - why should I believe them now?
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[d4m10n]

Publishing nonsense is what disinformation pedlars like Andrew Wakefield did, and he was rightly stripped of his doctoral license for what he did.

This is a spurious comparison, on at least a few levels.

Firstly, Wakefield maintains to this day that there was no hoax, fraud, or profit motive whereas folks like Sokal and Boghossian almost immediately admitted they were making **** up for the sake of testing the peer review process.

Secondly, Wakefield is persuading people to avoid potentially lifesaving measures, whereas the faux-pomo hoaxers were playing in a much less consequential sandbox. No one was harmed in the making...etc.

Finally, Wakefield was literally experimenting on children without proper oversight, e.g. performing unnecessary colonoscopies and spinal taps.

Continue to make this comparison if you like, but don't expect me to accept it.

 

[smartcooky]

This is a spurious comparison, on at least a few levels.

Firstly, Wakefield maintains to this day that there was no hoax, fraud, or profit motive whereas folks like Sokal and Boghossian almost immediately admitted they were making **** up for the sake of testing the peer review process.

Secondly, Wakefield is persuading people to avoid potentially lifesaving measures, whereas the faux-pomo hoaxers were playing in a much less consequential sandbox. No one was harmed in the making...etc.

Finally, Wakefield was literally experimenting on children without proper oversight, e.g. performing unnecessary colonoscopies and spinal taps.

Continue to make this comparison if you like, but don't expect me to accept it.

Granted, one is more serious than the other, but at the end of the day, they both knowingly published BS.

Boghossian is now no longer to be trusted in my book.

 

[Boudicca90]

Granted, one is more serious than the other, but at the end of the day, they both knowingly published BS.

Boghossian is now no longer to be trusted in my book.

We are still dealing with the consequences of Wakefield's BS, and I have no doubt that it influences the decisions of a lot of the current covid anti-vax movement. His research may have started with linking autism with vaccines, but it had the larger effect of sowing distrust in vaccinations in general.

It's a movement that may have started out among naïve liberals, but thanks to the politicization of covid, conservatives have jumped onto that nonsense, and in much larger numbers.

His research was rightfully debunked, but it still lives on among the devoted.

 

[Elaedith]

Writing a paper with the premise that journals like Social Text^WP are too quick to publish nonsense (and of course that is bad) isn't particularly demonstrative, in my view. Even if you point to several nonsensical papers which have slipped through, everyone involved will solemnly affirm they are doing proper postmodern deconstruction.

To truly demonstrate that selected journals are too quick to publish nonsense, you have to make up some utter nonsense, add the right buzzwords, and get it published in those journals. Then no one can say "You just don't understand how postmodern deconstruction works!"

Precisely! (IIRC, no one tried to cancel him at the time.)

Sokal is on the left and was trying to 'defend the Left from a trendy segment of itself' (the part that rejects liberalism, free inquiry, objective truth and other so-called enlightenment values). Unfortunately it looks like little was learned from it in the long run. I think the difference in reaction to Boghossian and colleagues compared to Sokal is a marker of how bad things have become.

 

[Cain]

Publishing nonsense is what disinformation pedlars like Andrew Wakefield did, and he was rightly stripped of his doctoral license for what he did.

I put this in the same category as that bastard Wakefield - publishing false or misleading information that you KNOW is untrue, under cover of academic privilege.

These two cases are in the same moral universe. A lot of publishing is fraudulent -- the academic industrial complex. Data dredging/P-hacking for tenure/The Replication Crisis. The authors of fake papers are quick to apprise readers of the hoax. It's the difference between perpetuating and dispelling a delusion.

 

[angrysoba]

Weirds me out when this drama bubbles up to mainstream outlets.

https://www.economist.com/united-st...ghlights-pressures-within-academia-to-conform

LOL! Peter Boghossian is now an example of "cancel culture"?

He resigned from his job! Then he went on a cringey Twitter tear demanding to know why CNN wasn't interviewing him as though his resignation should have been national news.

 

[smartcooky]

LOL! Peter Boghossian is now an example of "cancel culture"?

He resigned from his job! Then he went on a cringey Twitter tear demanding to know why CNN wasn't interviewing him as though his resignation should have been national news.

And the reality is, he was a Neville ******* Nobody anyway... World Famous in Portland .

Who here had ever heard of him anyway?
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[angrysoba]

I don't really have a problem with getting a hoax paper published in a journal. As has been mentioned, the Sokal hoax was a good example of that.

But Boghossian should have realized that he was breaching the IRB of his university. If you literally make up data and your "study" involves wasting the time and effort of editorial staff on numerous journals in order to point and laugh at them, and then you want to say, "Aha! Our study proves that grievance studies is phoney baloney, LOL!" then it becomes ironic, to say the least, that Boghossian is not living up to any academic standards himself. It is obviously on dodgy ethical grounds, and from the whole episode it is amusing that Boghossian, James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose were calling out "grievance studies" and now thinks that while trying to pick on a few obscure journals because they apparently promote the idea of oppressed groups, Boghossian think his own "oppression" and grievances are deserving of becoming national and international news.

The fact is that the Sokal Squared hoax was pretty much just a load of bollocks. It demonstrated very little of interest ("Hey, guess what! A lot of academic work is garbage!" - Is there anyone who didn't know this?), and Boghossian is a total grifter.

 

[angrysoba]

And the reality is, he was a Neville ******* Nobody anyway... World Famous in Portland .

Who here had ever heard of him anyway?
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I had heard of him, and knew of him as a grifter who has been trying to jump on various bandwagons to get clout. He's like Gad Saad in that he's always thought of himself as part of that well-known grifter club, the Intellectual Dark Web, but he's been left out because he wasn't interesting enough. LOL!

He's been trying to piss people off at his university for years by inviting people like Sargon of Akkad to give talks. Then when students react negatively he's been claiming cancel culture. It's been suspected that he has been trying to get himself fired for years, but when it didn't work he resigned.

I doubt anyone would give him a job in a university now, and he's not an A-lister in the griftersphere, so he'll have to make do with appearances on Epoch Times, Newsmax, and some other right-wing crank outlets from now on.

 

[d4m10n]

Who here had ever heard of him anyway?

TAM 2013 attendees, presumably.