Search results
Oct 5, 2018 · What an Audacious Hoax Reveals About Academia. Three scholars wrote 20 fake papers using fashionable jargon to argue for ridiculous conclusions. By Yascha Mounk. James A. Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose...
Nov 30, 2021 · The legacy of legendary academic prankster Alan Sokal lives on. In April 1996, the journal Social Text published an article by Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, that he...
- eric.kelderman@chronicle.com
- Senior Reporter
The Sokal affair, additionally known as the Sokal hoax, [1] was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of cultural studies.
In May 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in the fashionable academic journal Social Text. The essay quoted hip theorists like Jacques Lacan, Donna Haraway, and Gilles Deleuze. The prose was thick with the jargon of poststructuralism.
this argument, the author explicitly compares Alan Sokal's experiment with a similar experiment, performed by William M. Epstein and published in this very journal. Comparing the research questions, methods, ethics, and reception of these two experi-ments not only reveals the limitations of Sokal's critique but also shows that Sokal has
The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, refers to an article by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies.
People also ask
Who is Alan Sokal?
What is the Sokal affair?
Was Sokal's article a hoax?
Was Sokal a 'difficult & uncooperative author'?
Did Sokal publish a physicist's article a hoax?
Why did Sokal submit an article to Social Text?
Sokal is a critic of postmodernism, and caused the Sokal affair in 1996 when his deliberately nonsensical paper was published by Duke University Press's Social Text. He also co-authored a paper criticizing the critical positivity ratio concept in positive psychology .