Submission 16,792

Overview

Grievance Studies Hoax, also known as the Grievance Studies Affair and Sokal Squared, was a hoax orchestrated by Areo Magazine editor Helen Pluckrose, math doctorate James Lindsay and Portland State University assistant professor Peter Boghossian, who successfully submitted seven intentionally outlandish papers to various journals to see if they would be accepted for publication. The hoax has been compared to the 1996 Sokal hoax,^[3] during which physics professor Alan Sokal submitted a bogus article to the postmodern cultural studies journal "Social Text" to test the journal's rigor.

Background

On October 2nd, 2018, YouTuber Mike Nayna posted a short documentary in which Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian describe how they tricked various publications into publishing hoax papers (shown below). Among them included a paper on the sexual misconduct of canines at dog parks Portland, Oregon, which was accepted by the monthly "feminist geography" journal "Gender, Place * Culture." Another hoax paper titled “Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism," which included a rewrite of a chapter from Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf, was accepted by the peer-reviewed women and social work journal "Affilia." Additionally, the "Journal of Poetry Therapy" published what the trio described as "rambling nonsense" written by a "teenage angst poetry generator."

In the video, Lindsay claims his collaborators are "left-wing academics" and argues that the hoax found "making absurd and horrible ideas sufficiently politically fashionable, can get the validated at the highest level of grievance studies." Meanwhile, the trio released a Google Drive^[2] folder containing a summary of the hoax project along with all papers that had been accepted.

Developments

That day, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the hoax titled "Fake News Comes to Academia." Meanwhile, an article titled "The Grievance Studies Scandal: Five Academics Respond," was published in the online magazine Quillette.^[5] Also on October 2nd, Areo Magazine^[6] published a feature article about the hoax, written by Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian.

On October 3rd, Redditor AnnabelleSell submitted the YouTube video to /r/KotakuInAction,^[4] where it received upwards of 2,000 points (97% upvoted) and 300 comments within 24 hours. Meanwhile, YouTuber Tim Pool released a video on the incident titled "Major Hoax Proves Regressive Left Rampant In College" (shown below).

Portland State University

In late November 2018, the Portland State University Commitee of Inquiry sent a letter to Boghossian regarding the dog park paper, stating "“The Committee unanimously agreed that the ‘dog park’ article represents an unambiguous example of research data fabrication.” In mid December, the Portland State University Institutional Review Board (IRB) determined that Boghossian failed to secure the necessary approval from the board to conduct the study, indicating that "the project me the federal definition of 'human subject'" in reference to the journal reviewers who evaluated the paper. On December 14th, "Richard Dawkins": penned a letter to Portand State University Vice President titled "Alleged Research Misconduct by Dr Peter Boghossian" (shown below).

New College, University of Oxford OX1 3BN, UK Professor Mark R McLellan Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies Portland State University 14th December 2018 Dear Professor McLellan Alleged Research Misconduct by Dr Peter Boghossian My first response on reading of the punitive investigation into Dr Peter Boghossian's brilliant hoax was to let out a howl of incredulous mirth. Do your humourless colleagues who brought this action want Portland State to become the laughing stock of the academic world? Or at least the world of serious scientific scholarship uncontaminated by pretentious charlatans of exactly the kind Dr Boghossian and his colleagues were satirising? For satire it was, and it is of the essence of satire that it is not literally true How would you react if you saw the following letter:- Dear Mr Orwell It has come to our notice that your novel, Animal Farm, attributes to pigs the ability to talk, and to walk on their hind legs, chanting "Four legs good, two legs better." This is directly counter to known zoological facts about the Family Suidae, and you are therefore arraigned on a charge of falsifying data Bad scientists who falsify data do so to gain advancement - to improve their list of publications, for example. But Boghossian and his colleagues openly publicised the fact that their papers were satirical and that the putative data were false. If the members of your committee of inquiry object to the very idea of satire as a form of creative expression they should come out honestly and say so. But to pretend that this is a matter of publishing false data is so obviously ridiculous that one cannot help suspecting an ulterior motive. Could it be that somebody is gunning for Dr Boghossian for other reasons which they dare not admit? Of course I have not the smallest evidence for such a suggestion But don't you think it rather springs to mind, given that the accusation of falsifying data is so palpably absurd I suspect that you will probably agree and will have no difficulty in throwing out the accusation Yours sincerely Richard Dawkins FRS, DSc, Hon Dlitt, Hon DSc Emeritus Charles Simonyi Professor University of Oxford

On January 5th, 2019, the news site Areo^[7] published an article about the IRB decision titled "Academic Freedom or Social Justice: What Kind of University is Portland State?" That day, YouTuber Mike Nayna uploaded a video titled "PSU Accuses Peter Boghossian of Ethical Misconduct," featuring footage of Boghossian reacting to an email about the board's decision (shown below).