Seth_Goldin comments on Open Thread: January 2010 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 01 January 2010 05:02PM

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Comment author: Seth_Goldin 07 January 2010 08:42:51PM *  5 points [-]

Noted. In another draft I'll change this to make the point how easy it is for high-status academics to deal in gibberish. Maybe they didn't have so much status external to their group of peers, but within it, did they?

What the Social Text Affair Does and Does Not Prove

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/noretta.html

"From the mere fact of publication of my parody I think that not much can be deduced. It doesn't prove that the whole field of cultural studies, or cultural studies of science -- much less sociology of science -- is nonsense. Nor does it prove that the intellectual standards in these fields are generally lax. (This might be the case, but it would have to be established on other grounds.) It proves only that the editors of one rather marginal journal were derelict in their intellectual duty, by publishing an article on quantum physics that they admit they could not understand, without bothering to get an opinion from anyone knowledgeable in quantum physics, solely because it came from a conveniently credentialed ally'' (as Social Text co-editor Bruce Robbins later candidly admitted[12]), flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions, and attacked theirenemies''.[13]"

Comment author: thomblake 07 January 2010 08:49:38PM 1 point [-]

I'd forgotten that Sokal himself admitted that much about it - thanks for the cite.