Definition
The Grievance Studies Hoax (also known as “Sokal Squared”) was a 2017–2018 project by Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose. The trio authored twenty nonsensical, obscurantist papers and submitted them to leading academic journals in fields such as feminist philosophy, gender studies, and fat studies. Their goal was to expose the fraudulent nature of these “grievance” disciplines and the extent to which they prioritize ideological alignment over scientific rigor and common sense.
Why It Matters
It exposed the lack of academic rigor and the presence of ideological bias in certain sectors of social science, sparking a critical debate on institutional integrity. This event serves as a warning against letting political activism supersede the objective pursuit of truth in higher education.
Core Concepts
- Seven Accepted Papers: Included titles like “Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity in Urban Dog Parks” and a rewriting of a chapter of Mein Kampf using feminist buzzwords.
- Method to the Madness: The authors assiduously toiled over the prose to ensure it sounded profound while containing no genuine scientific value or logic.
- Sokal Precedent: Building on Alan Sokal’s 1996 hoax (“Transgressing the Boundaries”) in Social Text, proving that the problem had only worsened and expanded over twenty years.
- Institutional Backlash: Rather than lauding the whistleblowers, Portland State University investigated Peter Boghossian for “ethical breaches,” illustrating the Total Institutions in Academia tendency to protect the dogma.
- Phallic Climatology: A specific sub-hoax (the “Conceptual Penis”) that argued the human penis is a social construct that drives climate change, which was accepted by a peer-reviewed journal.