Forum Fridininum

I found an interesting entry in the Wikipedia about the Sokal Affair. The entry is about the physicist Sokal, who send in a pseudo scientific article about Quantum Gravity in a journal of cultural studies, called Social Text.

Sokal wanted to test if a journal like Social Text would “publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”

In the article Sokal states that “physical reality is at bottom nothing more than a social and linguistic construct,” and that the New Age concept of the morphogenetic field actually constitutes a “cutting edge theory of quantum gravity”. Anyone knowing anything of the subject would know this article to be wrong.

Apparently, Social Text did not know anything of the subject, for they published the article. Hehe, hilarious.

This is wat Social Text says about themselves:

Social Text covers a broad spectrum of social and cultural phenomena, applying the latest interpretive methods to the world at large. A daring and controversial leader in the field of cultural studies, the journal consistently focuses attention on questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment, publishing key works by the most influential social and cultural theorists. As a journal at the forefront of cultural theory, Social Text invites provocative interviews and challenging articles from emerging critical voices. Each issue breaks new ground in the debates about postcolonialism, postmodernism, and popular culture.

Who would ever want to read a journal with such bloated language?

This entry was posted on Friday, November 26th, 2004 at 12:10 pm and is filed under research.