Week 12 Q: The Sokal Affair

In his lecture on peer review, Prof. Galey mentioned that a poorly-done peer review advances the reviewer’s own agenda under the guise of an objective assessment. Interestingly, it seems to be this academic attitude that Alan Sokal was challenging when he published his article, “Transgressing the Boundaries.”

Sokal’s goal of sparking a debate on postmodernist humanities scholars’ approach to critiquing the hard sciences is laudable. However, I think a moral issue arises around Sokal’s use of the Social Text journal to make his point. The journal’s lack of a peer review procedure was a deliberate attempt to encourage more original, less conventional research, a laudable goal in itself. Sokal’s prank undermined the credibility of the journal, jeopardizing not only the publication’s admirable purpose but also the livelihood of those involved with publishing it. Perhaps a gentler way to perform this scholarly hoax would have involved Sokal performing a simplified version of Robb Willer’s controlled experiment involving Sokal’s paper. Sokal could have performed this experiment at a conference of postmodernist humanities scholars. Once the hoax was revealed, Sokal could have invited an open discussion on the topic among the conference attendees. His point would have been made, while the other harmful effects of his hoax avoided.

References

Wikipedia. (2013). The Sokal affair. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

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