9 votes

What the “grievance studies” hoax actually reveals: The headline-grabbing prank has more to do with gender than with academia

1 comment

  1. spit-evil-olive-tips
    Link
    Previous topics: https://tildes.net/~science/746/academic_grievance_studies_and_the_corruption_of_scholarship https://tildes.net/~misc/73n/the_grievance_studies_scandal_five_academics_respond This...

    Previous topics:

    https://tildes.net/~science/746/academic_grievance_studies_and_the_corruption_of_scholarship

    https://tildes.net/~misc/73n/the_grievance_studies_scandal_five_academics_respond

    This was the key takeaway for me - they're criticizing academia for doing politically-motivated not-especially-rigorous science, while engaging in that very same thing themselves:

    Sadly, we may never know, because the field of humanities hoaxing appears to suffer from several of the flaws it aims to expose. For one thing, it’s politically motivated, in the sense that its practitioners target only those politicized research areas that happen to annoy them. For another, it’s largely lacking in scientific rigor. Most (but not all) hoax projects lack meaningful controls, and they’re clearly subject to the most extreme variety of publication bias. That is to say, we only hear about the pranks that work, even though it’s altogether possible that skeptic-bros are writing bogus papers all the time, submitting them to academic journals, and ending up with nothing to show for their hard work. How many botched Sokal-style hoaxes have been tucked away in file drawers and forgotten because they fail to “prove” their point?

    3 votes