Sokal affair

Not to be confused with the Sokol affair involving the company Berkshire Hathaway.

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. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor, specifically to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies—whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross—[would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."[2]

The article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity",[3] was published in the journal's spring/summer 1996 "Science Wars" issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. The journal did not practice academic peer review at the time,[4] so it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist.[3][5] Three weeks after its publication in May 1996, Sokal revealed in the magazine Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax.[2]

The hoax caused controversy about the scholarly merit of commentary on the physical sciences by those in the humanities; the influence of postmodern philosophy on social disciplines in general; and academic ethics, including whether Sokal was wrong to deceive the editors or readers of Social Text; and whether Social Text had abided by proper scientific ethics.

In 2008, Sokal published Beyond the Hoax, which revisited the history of the hoax and discussed its lasting implications.

  1. ^ "The Sokal Hoax: A Forum", Lingua Franca, July 1996
  2. ^ a b Sokal, Alan D. (June 5, 1996), "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies", Lingua Franca, archived from the original on October 5, 2007
  3. ^ a b Sokal, Alan D. (November 28, 1994). "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". Social Text (46/47). Duke University Press (published 1996): 217–252. doi:10.2307/466856. JSTOR 466856. Archived from the original on May 19, 2017. Retrieved March 15, 2008.
  4. ^ Robbins, Bruce; Ross, Andrew (1996). "Editorial response to Sokal hoax by editors of Social Text" (PDF). Physics.nyu.edu. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 9, 2012. Retrieved March 11, 2012.
  5. ^ Bruce Robbins; Andrew Ross (July 1996). "Mystery science theater". Lingua Franca. Archived from the original on May 29, 2017. Retrieved May 3, 2009. Reply by Alan Sokal.