Someone is channeling Alan Sokal

[BaalChatzaf]

The science deprived ignoramuses of the open publications have been taken in again.

Please see http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/oct/04/science-hoax-peer-review-open-access

Alan Sokal did a similar think a few decades ago. The post-modernists swallowed the bait.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

Bob, I have agree with the author, Curt Rice, who said:

"In fact, the Science article shows exactly the opposite of what it intended, namely that we need an even wider use of open access than the one we currently have."

If, as Bohannon insists, these egregious articles are so obviously flawed, then the readers will reject them - and eventually the journals themselves.

That cuts closer to the root of the problem. With so many journals, how do you know the reputable ones? Reputation is earned one interaction at a time. That's all there is to it.

In addition to Diederik Stapel, the case of JAN HENDRIK SCHOEN (Schön) is iconic. He hoaxed Science and Nature - and he did that not to prove a point, but to get publications. He was a whiz kid at AT&T and Lucent Labs. His bosses approved his work.

However, just paying for publication is not inherently an invitation to fraud, just as peer review is (obviously) not a guarantee of truth. I just sold an article about John Leonard Riddell. Among other achievements, he invented the binocular microscope while teaching chemistry at the Louisiana Medical College (now Tulane University). He published his own works arguing for the germ theory of disease when most other educated people thought that the "animalcules" were a consequence of putrification caused by miasma. They though miasmas caused sickness. And, indeed, draining the swamps and clearing the garbage off the streets worked wonders.

I just put up two blog posts this past August: The Sokal Affair and Reflections on the Sokal Affair. This is the second time around for me with him. The first time, I was in graduate school. I had a class in "Ethics in Physics" for a science elective.

Of course, I was dealing with post modernists in social science. So, I found Sokol's first book in the library next to The Science Wars. I sent him an email and he replied with a brief "thanks." This time around, after the blog posts, I sent him a letter. No reply. I am sure that he was uncomfortable being associated with Ayn Rand's Objectivism. I have not yet written the whole thing up for an Objectivist medium. I will say that he is milking this for all it is worth because I have a third book here from him (2008) in which he gathered up more papers on the same subject - including the original hoax and the original exposure and one or two that also appeared in his second book on this about ten years ago or so.

All of that being as it may, obviously, I find him very compatible with what I accept in science. His leftist politics do not really get in the way all that much. He does hold a very hard line on the traditional scientific method and he therefore keeps Popper and Kuhn on short leashes. Yes, we need to falsify the falsehoods... yes, we have discovered new ways to understand the universe... but NO! falsifiability is not any kind of useful standard for truth and NO! science is not just a matter of passing fads.

I also wrote up the case of Diedrik Stapel on my blog. In fact, I have invested a lot in academic research integrity. I judge at science fairs. I have a middle school science seminar class on this. I have a separate blog dedicated to the topic. And on the main blog have several other articles.

[syrakusos]

This is of more than mere academic interest. Remember that many of these are MEDICAL journals (or like chemistry, the studies directly impact medicine). Sokol's third book, Beyond the Hoax (Oxford University Press: 2008), devotes a chapter to Martha E. Rogers and the Science of Unitary Human Beings. "Textbooks on nursing theory often devote a chapter in all seriousness..." Rogers was inducted into the Nursing Hall of Fame after teaching at New York University where she was the Head of the Division of Nursing for twenty years (1954-1975). She wrote: "The unitary human being (human field) is defined as an irreducible four-dimensional energy field identified by pattern and manifesting characteristics that are different from those of the parts and cannot be predicted from those parts." She wrote much more in the same vein, expanding into theories of "helicy" and "pandimensionality" and so on.

Rogers's works are still cited in nursing doctorate dissertations and master's theses.

Think about that the next time you are in the hospital.

[william.scherk]

Sokol's third book, Beyond the Hoax (Oxford University Press: 2008), devotes a chapter to Martha E. Rogers and the Science of Unitary Human Beings. "Textbooks on nursing theory often devote a chapter in all seriousness..." Rogers was inducted into the Nursing Hall of Fame after teaching at New York University where she was the Head of the Division of Nursing for twenty years (1954-1975). She wrote: "The unitary human being (human field) is defined as an irreducible four-dimensional energy field identified by pattern and manifesting characteristics that are different from those of the parts and cannot be predicted from those parts."

Thanks for this reminder of the wack embedded in Nursing Sciences. What you did not mention is that the precepts of Rogers (and her cough science) led to the rampant idiocy called "Therapeutic Touch," which is not touch and which is not therapeutic.

Lovel Sokal, love his co-author Bricmont, love anyone who takes an axe to murky 'science' such as TT.

For those who aren't familiar with Therapeutic Touch, Wikipedia has a decent balanced article.