A Massive Hoax Exposes Social Justice in Academia

(Will Powers) Better than the 1996 Sokal hoax, a nonsense paper that argued “quantum gravity is a social construct”, (1)  the greatest hoax of last twenty-four years is when James Lindsay and Professor Peter Boghossian played a joke on scholarly research publications to establish “this post-modern, leftist orthodoxy is utter nonsense.” (2)

Related Giant List Of MSM-Fueled Hate-Crime Hoaxes Meant To Frame Trump Supporters

Source – Mojo Morning

by Will Powers, February 20th, 2018

These guys aren’t right-wing ideologically driven white supremacist Trump supporters either.   Peter Boghossian is a philosophy professor at Portland State University, and an “outspoken atheist,” (3) who cannot stand Trump, or what comes out of his mouth and James Lindsay has a PhD in Mathematics, who refers to himself as “a renegade feminist,” (4) and he believes we should have “gender studies” and thinks the Trump administration “is borderline an unmitigated disaster” (5)

And yet, Professor Boghossian doesn’t blame “Trump” for “destroying our society.”  He blames “the progressive left and their ideological driven studies.”  That is what drove them to expose the mind rot of dishonest intellectualism that people in positions of responsibility base their opinions and policy decisions on. (6)

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Despite the gravity of the implications, this hoax has a humorous aspect.  When Professor Boghossian speaks about their first bogus paper “The Conceptual Penis is a Social Construct” (7) and “the dog humping paper,” that is “Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks,” or whatever, you will have to wonder how anyone could take this stuff seriously.

James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian appeared on The Rubin Report to talk about when they pulled the wool over the eyes of the establishment social science community from June to October, of 2018.  Dave Rubin, described as a “classical liberal” and the host of The Rubin Report on YouTube, once a member of The Young Turks network, interviewed these two fine intellectuals on his network station for publication on February 18, 2019. (8)

James Lindsay starting off by explaining the Soklo hoax that took place in the  Spring/Summer of 1996. (9)  “So,” Mr. Lindsay said, “Alan Sokal was a physicist, or is a physicist at NYU [New York University], and in the [19]90’s, ’95, ’96, he was looking at this post modern cultural criticism, and he was reading what they’re doing, and they’re using math words and physics ideas and terms and they’re just making up stuff, like some theorem about equalities or inequalities in mathematics and saying, and so this obviously means there are inequalities, so run with the pun about inequality and say some social stuff about it. And he started reading some of the stuff they were publishing, and thought, ‘Not only are they abusing science, there’s no way they even understand what they’re saying,’ and he wanted to check that out, so he wrote this paper, Transgressing the Boundaries…” and together with the help of Peter Boghossian, he came up with the exact title: “Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”.

READ the ACTUAL PAPER on the Soklo hoax: HERE

“He wanted to argue that quantum gravity is a social construct,” said Mr. Lindsay.  “So he wrote this complete nonsense paper, what they call a pastiche, where you took quotes from the post modernist and you threw them in there with nonsense…” misuse scientific terms, “and say goofy things” and he “sent it to a preeminent post modernist journal at Duke University, called Social Text” (10) and their editors accepted it, and published it.  And the same day they published it, he came out” and admitted “it was a fake,” and wrote “an expose article on it, explaining why he did it, ended up writing a best selling New York Times book, “Fashionable Nonsense”.  (11)

They use all these fashionable terms, that in reality are utterly meaningless, “and that was what was going on in the post-modernist cultural theories in the 1990’s” (12) And this was “a big blow” against intellectual studies full of mind rot.  These studies were used to make “fashionable” “political points” for “academic leftist.”

James Lindsay

 

The Conceptual Penis is responsible for climate change

The Sokal affair is “a great precursor”(13) to the hoax James Lindsay and professor Peter Boghossian pulled in June of last year, when their first bogus paper was published, “The Conceptual Penis is a Social Construct” Professor Boghossian said in an off-hand manner, “and we argued, among other things, penises are responsible for climate change.  …And that paper came under considerable criticism.  And so we took a look at the criticism and we said, ‘okay, lets see if we can replicate this on a grand scale.”

This was “the gate-keeper” (14) piece “to prove they couldn’t distinguish between made up nonsense and their own scholarship.  And we took a look at that criticism and we decided to replicate that on a massive scale, so we wrote 20 papers in 10 months and for context, these are papers that go to peer review journals, 7 papers in 7 years is tenure at most major universities, and we wrote with the help of Helen Pluckrose,” who would describe herself as a secular, liberal humanist and editor for Areo Magazine.  Although she wasn’t there for the Dave Rubin interview, there is an exclusive interview with Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay HERE.

“We had seven of those published, or accepted for publication,” Professor Boghossian said, “and the Wall Street Journal caught us and we had seven more under review, that we were going to resubmit.” (15)

In reviewing the “greatest hits” (16) of their academic hoaxes, among their repertoire, “the most famous” one was “the dog humping paper, as we’ll refer to it.”  While trying to remember, James Lindsay asked the professor, “What was it called?”

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According to the New York Times, it’s called, (17) “Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Ore.,” by “Helen Wilson,” a made-up name for a researcher, for a “study purported to observe dogs having sex, and how their owners reacted, to draw conclusions about humans’ sexual attitudes.”

The reason Mr. Lindsay had trouble remembering the name was his confusion between the actual title and the pet name, or “nick names” he gave for the paper.

“The nitty-gritty part like ‘human performativity, or human reactions to queer performativity to rape culture in urban dog parks’ or whatever,” said James Lindsay, as if it didn’t matter.  “It’s all just scholarly miss-mash.” (18)

The paper made the unlikely claim, the researcher “examined 10,000 dogs’ genitals before interrogating their owners about their sexual orientations.”  According to the papers’ abstract, “This article addresses questions in human geography and the geographies of sexuality by drawing upon one year of embedded in situ observations of dogs and their human companions at three public dog parks in Portland, Oregon,” the purpose being “to uncover emerging themes in human and canine interactive behavioral patterns in urban dog parks to better understand human a-/moral decision-making in public spaces and uncover bias and emergent assumptions around gender, race, and sexuality.” (19)

The National Review even reviewed the paper when it came out in June:

Helen Wilson insists that her dog-park study may have found some helpful
answers for how we handle rape culture among humans.

A paper written by Portland Ungendering Research Initiative’s Helen Wilson
claims that dog parks are actually very sexual places where we can learn things
about rape culture and “queer performativity.”

Yes — seriously. (20)

But Katherine Timpf, of the The National Review didn’t take it seriously, and concluded by saying, “Although it is certainly impressive that Wilson spent 100 hours watching dogs in parks for this study, I really don’t think that her work did anything to advance us as a society.”

James Lindsay chuckled over the silly study and said, “That paper is the greatest hit, because not only was it accepted for publication, not only was it published, but the Journal said it was one of THE best papers in feminist geography, and gave it special recognition and was going to make a big deal of it.” (21)

“The original point of that paper was to argue that rape culture is a big problem, and the best way to intervene on that was to train men in the way we train dogs.”  Mr. Lindsay said, “We’re going to start with our conclusion and try and get there.  How do we get to train men, like we train dogs?”  So Pete Boghossian went to the dog park to make observations and come up with some ideas, since “a dog training manual” didn’t work. (22) “So he’s just writing his experience,” or rather “this absurd made up experience at the dog park,” he said, he “sits in the dog park for 4, or 5 hours a day, never in heavy rain, and observes dogs and their humping behavior.” (23)

Professor Boghossian said the paper needed something more than the shocking claim that he “interrogated” the dog “owners, as to their sexual orientation,” so they came up with the line, “Dog parks are petri dishes for canine rape culture.” (24)

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More than that, they needed someone they could use to give the paper some perspective.  “What’s morally fashionable?”  Peter Boghossian asked.

He decided on “a black female criminologist” because black women have “the most depression variables,” and they are “what’s morally fashionable” right now and he wanted someone whose “lived experiences” would be impossible for them “to reject it, because they wouldn’t be validating someone’s lived experiences,” and sure enough, it was published. (25)

That was just one of their 7 hoax papers that were published, or about to be published.  Another one, even more astounding than a study on rape culture at dog parks, is the paper based on Hitler’s autobiography, “Mein Kampf”.

Professor Peter Boghossian

 

“Mein Kampf” As Intersectional Feminism

Taking “Chapter 12” out of “Mein Kampf”, James Lindsay and Professor Boghossian created the most elaborate and sophisticated hoax of them all.  Describing Hitler’s antisemitic autobiography, Professor Boghossian called it his “manifesto,” and “his auto-ethnography” as James put it. (26)

Helen Pluckrose suggested the idea of using “some famous old tract, that’s just gross and rewrite it as post modern progressive activism or whatever,” Mr. Lindsay informed us and that is what lead “very quickly to the idea of using “Mein Kampf.”

He says he read through the book and had his “oh my gosh, this is it” moment when he read “Chapter 12”  Mr. Lindsay describes “Chapter 12” as where Hitler decides “exactly how we are going to organize the Nazi Party and what sacrifices are necessary.”

“Chapter 12” of “Mein Kampf” available HERE

“I copy and pasted that straight off the internet onto a word document” and “everywhere it said, ‘our movement,’ ‘the Party’ whatever, I took that out and stuck in ‘intersectional feminism’” Mr. Lindsay said.

Intersectional feminism, according to Helen Puckrose, focuses “on critical race theory, queer theory and anti-ableism is the key,” anti-ableism being a prejudice against the disabled, seeing them as inferior. (27) Queer theory focuses on “mismatches between sex, gender and desire” (28) associated with bisexual, lesbian and gay subjects, but goes further to include cross-dressers, transsexuals, and people with gender ambiguity issues.  While the theory holds that individual sexuality is fluid, the theory is derived from the post-structuralist reconfiguration of identity positions. (29)

Helen Puckrose believes intersectionality “has an intense focus on identity and particularly on racial and ethnic identity.”  By focusing solely “on group identity and intersectional ideology,” this “places individuals in a very restricted ‘collectivist’ position previously only found in very conservative cultures.” (30)

This goes to the heart of why Helen, Professor Boghossian and Mr. Lindsay decided to play this hoax.  They could see a lot of the theories in the social science field didn’t make sense, because they were based on ideologically driven research.  They are humanitarian liberals and they support social studies that use sound evidence, that are based on the search for truth, not as reason to justify bad policy decisions.

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Using “Mein Kampf” was particularly interesting, showing an unconscious connection with the ideas of Hitler and the collectivist theories of the progressive left.

By replacing Hitler’s words, “the Party” with “intersectional feminism,” you end up with a document that makes no sense, like instead of saying, one “imagines that he can change the party character which every young movement possesses by changing this term”, you have, one “imagines that he can change [intersectional feminism] which every young movement possesses by changing this term.” (31)  Which makes no sense to me.

After substituting words in Hitler’s document, Mr. Lindsay said he molded the language “around that,” so the document would seem plausible, and then we changed all the wording just a little, so it would get past plagiarism, and that gave us this kind of unreadable document, that was just this transliteration of Hitler’s “Chapter 12 about how to be Nazis.” (32)

“Incredible,” said the host.

What they did, explained Mr. Lindsay, was “weave in” a lot of feminist theory” and Helen came up with the idea of using “choice feminism,” which says, “if a woman makes her own choices, then that’s feminist.”  That means any choice a woman makes is inherently a feminist act, an idea that is used to further women empowerment.

Looking at it from a black woman’s perspective, Mr. Lindsay said they started to weave in all these different theories from “intersectional critical race feminism scholarship, the black feminist scholarship” (33)  “We started weaving in theory in between pieces of Hitler, while we tried to maintain the tone and flavor that Hitler was putting out, so Hitler lays out a 14 point plan to design the Nazi Party and we condensed it down to 8, reordered them, so that they kind of made sense in some kind of theoretical structure and we sent it off to ‘Feminist Theory,’ a journal and we thought ‘there’s no way,’ you know, we just wanted to see what would happen.  We had no possible thinking this would get in.”

ABOUT Feminist Theory journal: READ

Feminist Theory rejected the paper, but they “peer reviewed it” Lindsay said.  Which meant they were “going to get comments.”  “We took those comments that ‘Feminist Theory’ gave us, saying, ‘Oh, it was too liberal, you’re trying to universalize feminism and that means one woman can speak for another woman.  It’s too liberal.’” (34)

“That’s actually incredible,” Rubin was amazed.

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“So we took those comments and modified it a little,” said Mr. Lindsay.  Then they sent it off to “a feminist social work journal,” who gave them “a few more comments,” like “‘you need to make ally-shift problematic, because if I have an ally, then I have a power dynamic with the person I’m allied with,’”

And Dave added, “If you could make it ‘a slave,’ that would be better.”  They all laughed many times during the interview.

After making the changes proposed by the journal, they sent it in and lo and behold, it was accepted.  And it was only days away from being published when the Wall Street Journal broke their story, and blew the lid off the whole hoax.  But the point is, this peer reviewed journal accepted the paper and was about to publish it, based on a chapter from “Mein Kampf”.

“Hitler was pushing the politics of grievance,” said Mr. Lindsay, “Hitler grew to power because he was pushing politics of grievance, ‘Germany got screwed.  We’re going to rise back up to a great Germany.  …Well, we called our stuff that we were targeting ‘grievance studies,’ because they study social grievances, through, not German identity, or national identity, but through personal identity, race, gender, sexuality, and so on, and so the politics of grievance were very appealing in a feminist social work journal.”  Social grievance “can go into social work and inform social workers on how to make feminism more solidified to improve social work out comes.”  That practical outcome is what is “scary” about the whole situation. (35)

Host Dave Rubin, The Rubin Report

 

Reason Prevails

Dave Rubin asked his guests why they went down this road, why they pursued this endeavor.

They wanted to uncover the intellectual lies in left-wing academia circles, because once they recognized what the problem was, “the problem being in post modernism, the problem being a corruption is scholarship,” they realized “that many disciplines have lost the focus on truth”, said Professor Boghossian, “they thought they already had the truth, so they placed an agenda before the truth.  And we’re deeply concerned about speech issues on campus.  We are deeply concerned about the fact that kids in class couldn’t view alternative opinions.  And I myself do not hold those opinions.  I’m not a conservative.  I’m not Christian.”  He wants “people to have the opportunity to voice their ideas, then have other people respond to those ideas.  So we took a look at this, and we traced it back to a single body of scholarship, basically anything that has the word ‘studies’ behind it.”  The people who have “taken over the administration and they’re institutionalizing ideas found in this body of literature and it’s absolutely toxic to us.  It’s poisoning us all.” (36)

That is when Professor Boghossian got in touch with Mr. Lindsay to see if he shared his perspective; Mr. Lindsay said the professor asked him, “‘Am I going crazy here?  Am I going crazy?’”  And Lindsay responded dryly, “Probably.”  But he wanted to hear more, because he was noticing “on social media” that “centrist liberals who wanted to have “an honest conversation about race,” were immediately shut down and called “racist”.  And he started to get called “racist for talking about it.” He was told, “Only white people can be racist.  Only men can be sexist.  It has to have structural power behind it and all this stuff…” which he viewed as “a peculiar definition,” (37) since they are using a specific term, “racism” and connecting it to a general term, “systemic” to make “systemic racism” nonspecific, in order to create the impression racism exists in places you can’t see it, making it seem more prevalent than it actually is.

Mr. Lindsay believes we should have “gender studies”.  He just thinks the research should be done in a legitimate way.  “It should have to follow the lines of evidence and it should have to admit when it’s wrong.  These are important topics.  Race is a huge issue.  Look how explosive it is: for the last several years it’s been the most explosive social topic.” (38)

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Dave suggested and Lindsay agreed, they have brought problem out into the open, “because of what they have created, because of what they have sewn.”, but when the other side starts accusing of conservatives of racism, they are creating an atmosphere where racism appears to exist in places, where in fact it doesn’t exist.

And Lindsay responded, “When you increase peoples awareness of race, or gender, or identity, you make it touchier, you make it a bigger deal, and make people look for reasons to dig into it and you do explode the issue.” (39)

Dave thinks the real source of racism is “coming from them.  …Yes, are there a couple of KKK members, are there a couple white supremacist?  Yes.  Do they have any institutional power?  No.  Does anyone with any academic power, or anyone think that they’re good?  No.  But this thing has power behind it.”

Mr. Lindsay agrees. “The progressive left refuses to have those conversations honestly.  When you dump 1.8 million people into a culture,” “from a totally different culture, things happen.  There are real issues around immigration and I really wish we could have grown up conversations about it.” “Part of the reason we can’t, is because one side is like it’s racist to have a conversation.” “You certainly don’t see the institutional racism that you used to.” (40)

For somebody who didn’t vote for President Donald Trump, Dave Rubin believes this kind of social engineering through gender studies, and race studies and so forth “is far more dangerous then anything Trump is saying.”  “I would say that is what is going to turn neighbor against neighbor.  You will look at your neighbor and judge them by the color of their skin and what they should get for that.” (41)  Playing identity politics is “the complete ripping the fabric of what America is.”

Professor Boghossian had to “agree,” despite the fact he cannot stand Trump, he does not think Trump is the one who is destroying our society.  It is the progressive left and their ideological driven studies.   “It is a toxin and it is destroying our society and again, it’s coming from one place and if people want to know, why should they care about a bunch of cooky academics?  It’s because this stuff spills out into the real world and it spills out consistently and now trained an entire generation of people, both to be brittle, when they hear something to be offended.  If you have a belief that is unevidenced, (sic) or you’re an intensely ideological person, then you have to do something to make up the slack when someone contradicts you.”  Since they cannot engage with the ideas, they resort to common name calling, or they “walk away” or whatever.  This learned behavior is deeply concerning to Professor Boghossian.  He believes the younger generation “should be doing is not teach them how to suspend their judgements”, they need to be taught how to “make better, more discerning judgements, especially as that spills out into the public sphere.”

Looking at both sides Mr. Lindsay sees more willingness toward open dialogue on the right than the left, whom he sees as being less tolerant.  However, he doesn’t “feel like that was the case ten years ago.  The right was locked down and the left was having these squabbles.” (42)  He thinks this political shift in honest discussion will change again someday.

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For the FULL Interview with James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian on The Rubin Report, CLICK HERE

REFERENCE:

1.   40 sec. The Rubin Report: February 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FuO-hEhQo

2.   NOTE: James Lindsay QUOTE: 50 sec. Ibid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FuO-hEhQo

3.   NOTE: Rubin called them “both outspoken atheist.” 1:02:00 min. Ibid.

4.   1:02:50 min. Ibid.

5.   53:50 min. Ibid.

6.   51:35 min. Ibid.

7.   SEE: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/mocking-gender-studies/
NOTE: RationalOptimist ARTICLE that “shows how easy it is to fool peer review” and declares “It’s time for science, and the softer social sciences in particular, to get their house in order.”

   8.   The Rubin Report: February 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FuO-hEhQo 

   9.   1:00 min. Ibid. 

  10.  1:50 min. Ibid.

  11.  NOTE: BOOK REVIEWS on FASHIONABLE NONSENSE from the Wall Street Journal, to  the New York Times Book Review, and others.: http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/sokala/nonsense.htm 

  12.  2:25 min. The Rubin Report: February 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FuO-hEhQo 

  13.  Note: Host: Dave called it “a great precursor” 3:15 min. Ibid.

  14.  3:50 min. Ibid. 

  15.  4:00 min. Ibid.
QUOTE: On October 2, 2018, the Wall Street Journal broke a story that showed how respectable academic research can be fooled by what its authors called “grievance studies” in such fields as “gender studies, race studies, sexuality studies, and so on.”  The goal being exposing “the corruption of scholarship that puts politically motivated research ahead of honest inquiry…”
SOURCE: https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/05/academic-freedom-or-social-justice-what-kind-of-university-is-portland-state/

16.  NOTE: Dave Rubin QUOTE, 4:40 min. The Rubin Report: February 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FuO-hEhQo 

  17.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/arts/academic-journals-hoax.html?module=inline 

  18.  4:30 min. The Rubin Report: February 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FuO-hEhQo 

  19.  https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/05/academic-freedom-or-social-justice-what-kind-of-university-is-portland-state/ 

  20.  https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/dog-park-study-rape-culture-portland-ungendering-research-initiative/ 

  21.  The Rubin Report: February 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FuO-hEhQo 

  22.  6:30 min. Ibid. 

  23.  6:45 min. Ibid.

  24.  7:00 min. Ibid. 

  25.  7:30 min. Ibid. 

  26.  8:00 min. Ibid. 

  27.  https://areomagazine.com/2017/02/15/the-problem-with-intersectional-feminism/

28.  Jagose, Annamarie, “Queer theory an introduction” New York: New York University Press, 1996

29.  Tyson, Lois, Critical Theory Today: A User-friendly Guide, 2006 New York: Routledge, p. 335
SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_theory#cite_note-3

30.  https://areomagazine.com/2017/02/15/the-problem-with-intersectional-feminism/

31.  http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/meinkampf/v1c12.htm

32.  9:20 min. The Rubin Report: February 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FuO-hEhQo 

  33.  10:00 min. Ibid. 

  34.  11:30 min. Ibid. 

  35.  12 min. Ibid. 

  36.  12:50 min. Ibid. 

  37.  15:20 min. Ibid. 

  38.  48:30 min.  Ibid. 

  39.  49:20 min. Ibid. 

  40.  49:30 min. Ibid. 

  41.  51:50 min. Ibid. 

  42.  1:01:45 min. Ibid. 

Stillness in the Storm Editor: Why did we post this?

Science and academia must be manipulated by the Deep State to effect their agenda of total control of society, by distorting what people believe to be true. If you can alter a person’s sense of reality, then they’ll behave the way you want all while thinking they’re acting of their own free will. Institutions of science are particularly important to control because a society is itself based on mutually agreed upon facts and values. Articulated knowledge, what a people recognize as true, passes through the gateway of science where it first enters the minds of the people. Once a phenomenon is acknowledged as real by the priesthood of science, policy decisions are made at the political level. The mechanisms of reality management work on the individual, like propaganda, as well as society at large, like the manipulation of science and religion. The preceding article reveals the manipulation of science. This is important to understand because it 1) reveals how the Deep State sculpts their false reality, through distorting information that comes into a population from the expert level, and 2) it reveals how the Deep State control individuals through culture and media. With this knowledge in hand, one can reclaim their powers of personal investigation, no longer depending on third party state-sponsored scientists and academics to tell them what’s real. In order to do so, one needs to learn the three pillars of knowledge acquisition: objective investigation, proper analysis and data compilation, and epistemic interpretation and integration.

– Justin

Not sure how to make sense of this? Want to learn how to discern like a pro? Read this essential guide to discernment, analysis of claims, and understanding the truth in a world of deception: 4 Key Steps of Discernment – Advanced Truth-Seeking Tools.

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Source:

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