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Social science hoax papers: Putting a respectable face on persecuting the hoaxers

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What’s hot? What’s not?/Niklas Bildhauer, Wikimedia

Portland University is trying to make Peter Boghossian rue the day he quit harassing religious believers and went after the much richer field of nobly rotting social sciences: We are now told that he might lose his job because of “the standards that usually apply in any field where human experiments are involved:

Similarly, the experts Singal contacted said the use of fake data still counts as data fabrication even if the dataset was obviously meant to be part of a satirical hoax. So there may be two grounds on which this IRB could decide to punish Boghossian.

The point Singal is making is that while you can certainly disagree with the way the IRBs are run, and many academics do, they do tend to be run in precisely this way.John Sexton, “More On Portland State University And The Grievance Studies Hoax” at Hot Air

In short, the editors are whinging that they have been made test subjects without their consent because there was a legitimate question whether their judgment is as abysmal as it has tested out to be. And that the intentional hoaxes were “bad data.” And other academics solemnly stand by those standards.

Indeed, academics have recently started to rallying round the grievance studies journals, with the risk of lost grants looming. Faux concern is expressed about the hoaxers’ motivation, as if one needed much motivation for razzing the clown car.

Sexton adds,

This investigation may be warranted but that doesn’t mean it’s not also being partly driven by a desire for some kind of retribution against the people who embarrassed an entire field. Singal suggests it would be best to separate out the question of whether Boghossian should have requested IRB approval from the larger question about the results of the hoax. That’s reasonable but I’m skeptical that anyone on the other side of this particular aisle is interested in doing that. On the contrary, the IRB investigation seems like a convenient way to write-off the results of the survey as flawed. More On Portland State University And The Grievance Studies Hoax” at Hot Air

Okay, when people have no shame, they have no shame. We can live with that once it’s acknowledged. But in that case, why should we expect any benefit to come from public financial support of social science as if it were some kind of science? Social scientists might, of course, be eligible for an arts grant somewhere, for theatre celebrating unique cultures…

Then, essentially, the whole problem disappears. As in, you and I might think that misgendering dogs is a nonsense concept. But so what if someone chooses to make it their lifelong concern—so long as no actual dogs are harmed? And it keeps the academics off the streets and out of harm’s way.

In other words, let’s see the forest for a minute, not just the trees: The very fact that the hoax is generally known as the Grievance Studies hoax and the journals in question are becoming generally known as “Grievance Studies” journals is social rat poison, self-administered. Destroying academics’ careers may feel good but it will not rescue the field’s reputation among thinking people. – O’Leary for News

See also: Embattled “Social Sciences Hoax” Prof Is Not A Hero, He’s A Canary

Social Science Hoaxer’s Job At Risk For Revealing “Bias”

Sokal hoaxes strike social science again

Exposing gender studies as a Sokal hoax

Social Science Hoax Papers Is One Of RealClearScience’s Top Junk Science Stories Of 2018

and

Alan Sokal, Buy Yourself A Latte: “Star Wars” Biology Paper Accepted

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Comments
Jad@2 when you assign a field of study a label of"science"it seems there should be a boundary that can at least pass a smell test or raise alarms. in the absence of either, which is what this case looks like, terms seem to become meaninglesses58
January 15, 2019
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I have to disagree with these types of hoaxes. It’s just another form of trolling. Don’t we have enough of that in society due to the internet? Haven’t we seen our share of that here at UD? What we need is honest discourse and debate. Hoaxes are intentionally dishonest.john_a_designer
January 14, 2019
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After careful consideration, it seems that the appropriate response to this is hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.... well, you get the idea aside to Wordpress appears to be a bug in your windowing software, if it persists after this edites58
January 14, 2019
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