The Sokal affair illustrates that entire fields can exist completely without merit.
It illustrated nothing of the sort. The Sokal affair illustrated that a non-peer-reviewed, non-science journal will publish bad science writing that was believed to be submitted in good faith.
Social Text was not peer-reviewed because they were hoping to… do… something. What Sokal did was similar to stealing everything from a ‘good faith’ vegetable stand and then criticizing its owner for not having enough security.
Noted. In another draft I’ll change this to make the point how easy it is for high-status academics to deal in gibberish. Maybe they didn’t have so much status external to their group of peers, but within it, did they?
What the Social Text Affair Does and Does Not Prove
“From the mere fact of publication of my parody I think that not much can be deduced. It doesn’t prove that the whole field of cultural studies, or cultural studies of science—much less sociology of science—is nonsense. Nor does it prove that the intellectual standards in these fields are generally lax. (This might be the case, but it would have to be established on other grounds.) It proves only that the editors of one rather marginal journal were derelict in their intellectual duty, by publishing an article on quantum physics that they admit they could not understand, without bothering to get an opinion from anyone knowledgeable in quantum physics, solely because it came from a conveniently credentialed ally'' (as Social Text co-editor Bruce Robbins later candidly admitted[12]), flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions, and attacked theirenemies″.[13]”
It illustrated nothing of the sort. The Sokal affair illustrated that a non-peer-reviewed, non-science journal will publish bad science writing that was believed to be submitted in good faith.
Social Text was not peer-reviewed because they were hoping to… do… something. What Sokal did was similar to stealing everything from a ‘good faith’ vegetable stand and then criticizing its owner for not having enough security.
Noted. In another draft I’ll change this to make the point how easy it is for high-status academics to deal in gibberish. Maybe they didn’t have so much status external to their group of peers, but within it, did they?
What the Social Text Affair Does and Does Not Prove
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/noretta.html
“From the mere fact of publication of my parody I think that not much can be deduced. It doesn’t prove that the whole field of cultural studies, or cultural studies of science—much less sociology of science—is nonsense. Nor does it prove that the intellectual standards in these fields are generally lax. (This might be the case, but it would have to be established on other grounds.) It proves only that the editors of one rather marginal journal were derelict in their intellectual duty, by publishing an article on quantum physics that they admit they could not understand, without bothering to get an opinion from anyone knowledgeable in quantum physics, solely because it came from a
conveniently credentialed ally'' (as Social Text co-editor Bruce Robbins later candidly admitted[12]), flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions, and attacked theirenemies″.[13]”I’d forgotten that Sokal himself admitted that much about it—thanks for the cite.