Academic Hoaxes and Trolling: From Sokal to Grievance Studies

Research Compilation for “The Fires of History”

1. The Sokal Affair (1996)

The Paper

Title: “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” (Sokal)

Author: Alan Sokal, professor of physics at NYU.

What it claimed: Quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. Physical reality itself is fundamentally a social construct. Proposed that a “liberatory science” aligned with progressive politics could replace the outdated notion of objective reality.

The paper was deliberately nonsensical – Sokal described it as “a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense.” In Lingua Franca Sokal described the method: “I assemble a pastiche — Derrida and general relativity, Lacan and topology, Irigaray and quantum gravity — held together by vague rhetoric about ’nonlinearity’, ‘flux’ and ‘interconnectedness’” (Sokal, Lingua Franca, May/June 1996). Claims included:

• Physical “reality” is a social and linguistic construct
• “The π of Euclid and the G of Newton, formerly thought to be constant and universal, are now perceived in their ineluctable historicity”
• Quantum mechanics proves objective reality doesn’t exist
• Luce Irigaray’s and N. Katherine Hayles’s “exegeses of gender encoding in fluid mechanics,” and Irigaray’s “Is the Subject of Science Sexed?”, cited approvingly (the paper does not cite Irigaray’s claim that E=mc² is a “sexed equation”; that claim is discussed later, in Fashionable Nonsense)
• Called for a “liberatory mathematics” and “postmodern science”

The Journal: Social Text

Published by Duke University Press, focused on postmodern cultural studies. The Spring/Summer 1996 issue was specifically a “Science Wars” issue responding to critiques of postmodernism by scientists. (Wikipedia) Social Text was not peer-reviewed – the editorial board reviewed submissions rather than external referees. Its editor Bruce Robbins: “it was never peer-reviewed (that issue came up of course apropos of the Sokal disaster)” (Robbins, “Belittled Magazine,” The Baffler). The editors accepted the paper because a physicist appeared to be endorsing their framework. They asked Sokal to make revisions; he refused all changes; they published it anyway – without consulting any physicists.

The Reveal

Same day the issue was published (May 1996), Sokal revealed the hoax in Lingua Franca (May/June 1996, pp. 62-64): “A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies.” He had written it as a deliberate test: would a leading journal “publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions?” (Lingua Franca, Sokal’s copy; mirror)

Key detail: Sokal was a self-described leftist and feminist, not a conservative attacking the humanities: “I’m a leftist too (under the Sandinista government I taught mathematics at the National University of Nicaragua)” and “I’m a leftist (and feminist) because of evidence and logic, not in spite of it” (Sokal, Lingua Franca, May/June 1996), and “I confess that I’m an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class” (Sokal, “Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword,” Dissent 43(4), 1996). He argued that epistemic relativism was ultimately a tool that could be weaponized by the powerful, not the marginalized: “Theorizing about ’the social construction of reality’ won’t help us find an effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming.”

Responses

• Stanley Fish (NYT): A journal being deceived only demonstrates that trust exists, not that the field’s ideas are wrong. His illustration was baseball: “Are balls and strikes socially constructed? Yes. Are balls and strikes real? Yes.” (Fish, NYT)
• Andrew Ross and Bruce Robbins (Social Text editors): Sokal committed a breach of scholarly ethics by submitting in bad faith.
• Jacques Derrida: Accused Sokal of acting in bad faith and misrepresenting deconstruction.
• Bruno Latour: Called it hurtful but acknowledged it forced productive reflection.

Long-Term Impact

• Sokal & Bricmont published Impostures intellectuelles (1997; in English as Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science, 1998) (OpenLibrary)
• Social Text stayed a journal without external peer review (Robbins, above)
• After Sokal, it became much harder to make strong social-constructivist claims about the hard sciences without pushback

2. The Grievance Studies Affair / “Sokal Squared” (2017-2018)

The Hoaxers

• James Lindsay (mathematician/author)
• Peter Boghossian (assistant professor of philosophy, Portland State)
• Helen Pluckrose (British writer, editor of Areo Magazine)

The Project

Over approximately one year, they wrote and submitted 20 hoax papers to peer-reviewed journals in gender studies, queer studies, fat studies, and critical race theory. By exposure in October 2018:

• 7 accepted (4 already published)
• 7 still under review
• 6 rejected

(Wikipedia)

The Most Notable Papers

1. “Dog Park” Paper – Published in Gender, Place & Culture

• Claimed 1,000 hours observing dogs to study “rape culture” among dogs at Portland dog parks
• Argued dog parks are “rape-condoning spaces” and men should be trained like dogs
• Won a special recognition award from the journal’s 25th anniversary edition (Wikipedia)

2. The Mein Kampf Rewrite – Accepted by Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work

• A rewrite of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Chapter 12, with “Jews” replaced by “white men,” “Aryans” by “feminists,” “Germany” by “feminism”
• Reviewers accepted argumentation structurally identical to fascist rhetoric (Times of Israel)

3. “Going In Through the Back Door” – Published in Sexuality & Culture

• Argued straight men should use anal sex toys to become less transphobic

4. “Fat Bodybuilding” – Accepted by Fat Studies

• Proposed “fat bodybuilding” competitions judged on “health at every size” principles

5. “Breastaurant Masculinity” – Published in Sex Roles

• Fake ethnographic study of Hooters restaurants with entirely fabricated data

Aftermath

• Boghossian was investigated by Portland State’s IRB for conducting research on human subjects without approval; eventually resigned in 2021 (Wikipedia)
• Critics argued any field can be fooled by a sufficiently determined hoaxer, and that 6 rejections showed the system partially worked
• The exposure: Wall Street Journal journalist Jillian Kay Melchior began investigating; the trio went public in Areo Magazine (October 2, 2018)

3. Other Academic Hoaxes

The Piltdown Man (1912)

A composite forgery: medieval human skull fragments and an orangutan jawbone and teeth (Bruce Bower, Science News, 9 Aug 2016; Kent Archaeological Society, “Piltdown Recollected”), chemically treated to appear ancient – “highly likely that a single orang-utan specimen and at least two human specimens were used.” Presented as the “missing link” – Eoanthropus dawsoni. Confirmed prevailing expectations among British anthropologists and national pride. Not definitively exposed until 1953 – over 40 years. The 2016 re-examination found a consistent modus operandi across both sites, “linking all specimens from the Piltdown I and Piltdown II sites to a single forger – Charles Dawson. Whether Dawson acted alone is uncertain.” (De Groote et al., Royal Society Open Science, 2016) Other suspects proposed over the years include Arthur Conan Doyle, Martin Hinton and Teilhard de Chardin. Misdirected human evolutionary research for decades.

The Ossian Poems (James Macpherson, 1760s)

Macpherson published poems attributed to Ossian, a 3rd-century Gaelic bard. Immediate sensation – influenced the Romantic movement, admired by Goethe, Napoleon, Jefferson. Samuel Johnson demanded to see the original manuscripts; Macpherson threatened him. Johnson replied: “I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian.” (Wikiquote) Modern consensus: Macpherson drew on genuine Gaelic fragments but essentially composed original poetry in archaic style. The poems had enormous real cultural impact despite their dubious authenticity.

SCIgen (MIT, 2005)

Computer program by three MIT grad students that automatically generates fake computer science papers – grammatically correct, technically jargon-filled, entirely meaningless. Originally submitted to the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI) – accepted (SCIgen, MIT). In February 2014 IEEE and Springer withdrew more than 120 SCIgen papers found by Cyril Labbé (Nature, 24 Feb 2014, “Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers”). The website remains online. Related: Mathgen (fake math papers); “Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List” (a paper consisting entirely of that repeated phrase, accepted by International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology with a review score of “excellent”). (Wikipedia)

The Ern Malley Hoax (1944)

Two Australian poets created a fictional poet and wrote deliberately meaningless modernist poetry. Published enthusiastically in Angry Penguins. (Wikipedia) Irony: some critics later argued the Ern Malley poems were actually quite good – the hoaxers, despite trying to write badly, had produced genuinely interesting poetry.

The Bogdanov Affair (2001-2002)

French twin brothers published papers in theoretical physics journals (Annals of Physics, Classical and Quantum Gravity) that many physicists regarded as meaningless. Unlike Sokal, they insisted their work was genuine – creating an unresolved ambiguity. (Wikipedia)

4. “Reviewer 2” – The Troll Within the System

Peer Review as Institutionalized Trolling

The figure of “Reviewer 2” has become a meme within academic culture. Characteristics that parallel trolling:

• Anonymity: Same shield that enables online trolling
• Bad faith engagement: Deliberately misreading papers, demanding impossible revisions, insisting the author cite the reviewer’s own work
• Power asymmetry: Reviewer holds career-affecting power without accountability
• Performative cruelty: “The biggest problem with this manuscript, which has many problems, is that it exists”
• Gatekeeping as identity: Deriving satisfaction from rejection itself

Academic Hoaxes as Counter-Trolling

The academic system as troll:

• Peer review uses anonymity and power asymmetry to gatekeep, enforce conformity, punish dissent
• Academic jargon functions as exclusion: “you don’t belong here”
• The publish-or-perish system rewards gaming over genuine inquiry

The hoaxer as counter-troll:

• Uses the system’s own conventions against it
• Exploits trust-based peer review (the same vulnerability trolls exploit everywhere)
• Reveals designed for maximum humiliation – characteristically trollish

The paradox:

• Is it trolling to expose trolling? Is peer review trolling? Is the hoax legitimate critique in troll’s clothing?
• The progression from Piltdown (1912) to Sokal (1996) to Grievance Studies (2018) to SCIgen (ongoing) mirrors the history of trolling itself – from individual pranksters to political provocateurs to industrialized operations to automation.

5. The Trajectory of Academic Trolling

Chapter Fit: Ch. 12 (Science Trolling) primary; Ch. 9 (Art as Trolling) for Ossian/Ern Malley; “Reviewer 2 Through the Ages” departure space.

Source URLs

• Alan Sokal’s original hoax paper (1996)
• Sokal Affair — Wikipedia
• Sokal & Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense (1998)
• Lingua Franca original exposé
• Grievance Studies affair (2017–2018)