The Sokal and Grievink Affair

The two scientists Alan Sokal and the team of Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose are known for deliberately publishing nonsensical, fake studies in prestigious scientific journals to test the quality of the peer review process and to draw attention to weaknesses in certain disciplines.

Alan Sokal (1996, Sokal Affair)

Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University, published an intentionally nonsense article in 1996 in the renowned Social text, an interdisciplinary journal for culture and society. The title of the article was:

„Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity“

The article contained a mixture of meaningless jargon that gave the impression that it was a serious scientific work intended to combine physics and postmodernism. Sokal later admitted that he wanted to test the quality of the peer review process, as he feared that pseudoscientific ideas were not sufficiently challenged in some disciplines.

Recommended reading: Alan Sokal's book „Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture“ (2008) provides a detailed explanation of the experiment.

Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose (2018, Grievink affair)

In 2018, three scientists Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose began an even more far-reaching experiment that became known as the „Grievink Affair“. Their goal was to deliberately publish fake, ideologically motivated, and nonsensical articles in social science journals to test the quality of the peer review process.

Some of the most well-known fake studies they submitted included:

• „The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct“ – This article, which is published in the Cogent Social Sciences was published, claimed that the penis could be considered a social construct. He was later withdrawn.
• „Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon“ – This study addressed the topic „rape culture“ and „queer performativity“ using dog run-free zones and was conducted in the Gender, Place & Culture Journal published.
• „The Gendered Brain: Implications for Transgender Ideology“ – Another critical article on intersectional gender discourses, also accepted in a social science journal.

These studies were accepted through the peer review process of the journals, revealing the weaknesses in scientific methodology and the dilution of the peer review process in some disciplines. Some of the articles were later retracted when the experiment came to light.

Importance of peer review criticism

Both cases –the Sokal affair and the Grievink affair– shed important light on the quality of the peer review process and the need to critically examine scientific integrity and methodology. Especially in the field of social sciences and humanities, it became apparent that ideological orientations and political tendencies were sometimes more important than the scientific validity of the studies.

Other sources:

• The book by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose: „Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody“ (2020), which describes the theories and the experiment in detail.
• Coverage in major media such as The Guardian, The Atlantic and New York Times on the Grievink affair.
• Websites like the Heterodox Academy provide further information and discussions on the affairs and their significance for science.