FeminismScienceSkepticism

SoD Cross Post: Gender Studies “Hoax” Shockingly Reveals Scammy Vanity Journals Will Publish Nonsense

This post originally appeared on our sister site, School of Doubt. Read it there or catch the beginning below.

When Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay published their recent hoax article “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” in the journal Cogent Social Sciences, they clearly thought they had just majorly dunked on those Foucault-fellating nerds over in the Gender Studies department. “Ha-ha,” they no doubt said, in sing-song Nelson style, while pointing at the silly feminists who–fingers cramped and worn from their years of clutching both their pearls and their dog-eared copies of Gender Trouble fast to their keffiyeh-draped breasts–would no doubt now finally be forced to acknowledge the total vacuity and intellectual bankruptcy of their entire discipline. A Second Coming of Sokal, truly.

Michael Shermer was suitably breathless in his praise of the authors, writing as an introduction to their revelation of the hoax in Skeptic magazine:

Every once in awhile it is necessary and desirable to expose extreme ideologies for what they are by carrying out their arguments and rhetoric to their logical and absurd conclusion, which is why we are proud to publish this expose [sic] of a hoaxed article published in a peer-reviewed article [sic] today. It’s [sic] ramifications are unknown but one hopes it will help reign [sic] in extremism in this and related areas.

Of course, what Boghossian and Lindsay actually proved with their little stunt was something entirely unrelated and unsurprising to anyone working in academia today: scammy, exploitative, pay-to-play academic journals will publish literally anything in return for cold, hard cash.

Continue reading at School of Doubt

Dan

Dan holds a PhD in Music History from a major Canadian university and is now pursuing a M.Ed in Higher Education at another one, because he likes to collect very expensive paper. He performs stand-up comedy at venues all over Toronto when he's not busy playing JRPGs with his cat, Roy. You can follow him at @incontrariomotu, but he isn't going anywhere. You can also send him a tip on PayPal (paypal.me/dandonnelly) if you like his work!

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