Return-Path: list-relay@UCSD.EDU
Date: Mon, 27 May 1996 16:37:26 -0700
To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU
From: lichter@ucla.edu (Michael I. Lichter)
Subject: Sokal "hoax"
I'm curious if anybody has seen the Alan Sokal "hoax" article that was
published in Social Text and has apparently gotten a lot of publicity.  I
wonder if it's really as meaningless as Sokal says.  Does this hoax pose
any danger to the credibility of sociology (which was not directly
implicated)?

I have included an excerpt from the May '96 mini-Annals of Improbable
Research (publication and subscription info at end), which is where I first
heard about it.  I assume that since others have mentioned it, that the
hoax is not the mini-AIR's.

Michael


> -----------------------------------------------------------
> 1996-05-04      Levels of Non-Meaning: The Recursive Hoax
>
> What, indeed, is reality? Fed up with the persistence of pseudo-
> scientific pseudo-scholarly claptrap and gibberish, Alan Sokal
> submitted a load of intentionally utter nonsense to a
> "prestigious" "cultural studies" journal. 'Tis a wonderful piece
> of writing, indistinguishable from (and no less coherent than) the
> articles it mocks. The journal, "Social Text," published this
> wonderfully moronic prose in its May '96 issue. Sokal, a New York
> University physicist, then wrote up the whole fiasco; he published
> his expose in the magazine "Lingua Franca." All this has been
> detailed in the general press.
>
> But it may not be the whole story. We obtained a copy of "Social
> Text" and commissioned a panel of scholars (one of whom is a
> convicted felon) to read and deconstruct the text. The panel
> concluded -- unanimously -- that the other articles in "Social
> Text" are devoid of meaning and probably are themselves hoaxes.
> Thus Professor Sokal, thinking that he was cleverly showing up
> some rotten eggheads, was instead being suckered by a band of
> jokers more clever than himself.
>
> So bravo, bravo, bravo to the deadpan merry old pranksters who
> call themselves "cultural studies scholars." Their many deadpan
> statements to the press in recent days are further triumphs in the
> grand dada style.
>
> [TECHNICAL AFTERNOTE: For the sake of completeness, we now plan to
> pulverize our copy of "Social Text," and flush the particles into
> a particle accelerator. Our expectation is that this Deridaist-
> Joycean-Gell-Mannian particle collision process will synthesize a
> new word: "krock," which is derived from "krauq, which is a
> backwards spelling of the word "quark."]

> The mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
> Issue Number 1996-05
> May, 1996
> ISSN 1076-500X
> Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel, AIR, the
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> A free newsletter of tidbits too tiny to fit in
>         The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR),
>         the journal of inflated research and personalities
> ================================================================

> -----------------------------------------------------
> 1996-05-19      Our Address (*)
>
> The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
> PO Box 380853, Cambridge, MA 02238 USA
> 617-491-4437 FAX:617-661-0927
>
> EDITORIAL: marca@wilson.harvard.edu
> GENERAL INFO (supplied automatically): info@improb.com
> SUBSCRIPTIONS: air@improb.com
>
> URL: http://www.improb.com/
>
> We read everything we receive, but are unable to answer all of it.
> If you need a reply, please include your Internet address and/or a
> SASE in all printed correspondence.

--
Michael Lichter <lichter@nicco.sscnet.ucla.edu>
UCLA Department of Sociology