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Nebu comments on The "Spot the Fakes" Test - Less Wrong
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I find the Ern Malley episode a bit puzzling. Yes, if we're talking about, say the origin of a religious story, then it's possible to reveal the theory as false. But there isn't such a thing as "true" or "false" in prose. Even if McAuley and Stewart purposely wrote what they considered to be bad poems, what does their intent matter if they produced poems others thought were good? If I like a book, my liking of it doesn't become "wrong" or "mistaken" if it's revealed that the author was actually trying to write a bad book, anymore than me disliking a book becomes mistaken simply because the author was trying to write a good book.
Usually in art-criticism, the critics aren't really concerned with whether any one particular person likes or dislikes the particular work of art. Instead, they are trying for less value-oriented analysis, such as what themes might be present, what techniques were used, etc.
So probably the embarrassment from the hoax was due to the "fake-critics" claiming that surely one particular passage was a truly inspired example of symbolism of the dichotomy present in male-female relationships or whatever, only for the hoaxers to reveal that there was no symbolism at all, as the passage was randomly generated.