New Atheists on Charade: Sokalled Hoax

[ignorantianescia]

New Atheist side show writers Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay have decided to attempt a rerun of the Sokal hoax in a gender studies journal and got their article published, with the predictable result that other, more prominent New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Shermer, Coyne, Pinker) have hailed it as an almighty triumph. Crooked Timber has a useful overview in their criticism, also including several links to other blogs. The hoax authors also have an exposition in Skeptic Magazine (which reads like the sort of thing Tom Verenna could have written).

This from the Skeptic article looks like the most relevant paragraph on their method (with the italics removed):

We didn’t originally go looking to hoax Cogent Social Sciences, however. Had we, this story would be only half as interesting and a tenth as apparently damning. Cogent Social Sciences was recommended to us by another journal, NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, a Taylor and Francis journal. NORMA rejected “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” but thought it a great fit for the Cogent Series, which operates independently under the Taylor and Francis imprimatur.

Throwing in some additional background information leads to the following order of actions:

• First sending the article proposal to an unranked journal
• Having the hoax paper rejected by that journal
• Receiving a redirection to a pay-to-play vanity journal (some bloggers suggest that this was an automated response, but the article doesn't mention that)
• Getting some academic fund to pay little over 600 bucks for the submission
• Publishing the hoax in a predatory journal just to declare victory

Which I suppose is a hoax of sorts, but not quite one that supports the touted narrative. But many of us here have come to expect the occasional lapses in logic by most of these New Atheist authors. Especially when a story feels too good to be sceptical.

Edit: Steven Pinker, to his credit, has distanced himself from the hoax. He also links to an article on Salon.

[fortigurn]

As I see it, the original journal which didn't accept it for publication (NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies), is not a predatory journal and still judged the paper worthy of publication. That's a problem. Not only that, but NORMA actually recommended it be published in "Cogent Social Sciences", which is part of the Taylor & Francis Group to which NORMA itself belongs.

In fact NORMA referred to Cogent Social Sciences as " our Cogent Series, a multidisciplinary, open journal platform for the rapid dissemination of peer-reviewed research across all disciplines", not "A predatory journal of absolutely no academic value". So here are the problems.

1. NORMA, a respectable non-predatory journal, considered this paper worthy of publication and recommended a specific journal in which it should be published. That is a huge problem, since the paper was clearly gibberish and was not fit for publication in any journal.

2. NORMA did not say anything about the journal it recommended being a predatory journal. It recommended it as " our Cogent Series, a multidisciplinary, open journal platform for the rapid dissemination of peer-reviewed research across all disciplines". And that journal is part of the Taylor & Francis Group, which should have higher standards.

[ignorantianescia]

May 24, 2017 18:41:49 GMT fortigurn said:

As I see it, the original journal which didn't accept it for publication (NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies), is not a predatory journal and still judged the paper worthy of publication. That's a problem. Not only that, but NORMA actually recommended it be published in "Cogent Social Sciences", which is part of the Taylor & Francis Group to which NORMA itself belongs.

In fact NORMA referred to Cogent Social Sciences as " our Cogent Series, a multidisciplinary, open journal platform for the rapid dissemination of peer-reviewed research across all disciplines", not "A predatory journal of absolutely no academic value". So here are the problems.

1. NORMA, a respectable non-predatory journal, considered this paper worthy of publication and recommended a specific journal in which it should be published. That is a huge problem, since the paper was clearly gibberish and was not fit for publication in any journal.

2. NORMA did not say anything about the journal it recommended being a predatory journal. It recommended it as " our Cogent Series, a multidisciplinary, open journal platform for the rapid dissemination of peer-reviewed research across all disciplines". And that journal is part of the Taylor & Francis Group, which should have higher standards.

I think it makes a huge difference if the NORMA editor rejects the article but personally redirects the authors to a vanity journal or if the editor simply rejects the article for publication and Taylor & Francis automatically sent an email with an offer for Cogent Social Sciences. The Skeptic article strongly suggests that it was in the same email, but I do not really trust Boghossian and Lindsay and this sociologist suggests it was an automatic email forward. So there doesn't seem to be clarity on whether the editor was actually involved.

The clear scandal in my view is that Taylor & Francis Group has gone into the business of predatory journals.

[fortigurn]

May 24, 2017 19:01:51 GMT ignorantianescia said:

I think it makes a huge difference if the NORMA editor rejects the article but personally redirects the authors to a vanity journal or if the editor simply rejects the article for publication and Taylor & Francis automatically sent an email with an offer for Cogent Social Sciences. The Skeptic article strongly suggests that it was in the same email, but I do not really trust Boghossian and Lindsay and this sociologist suggests it was an automatic email forward. So there doesn't seem to be clarity on whether the editor was actually involved.

I don't see any evidence for an automatic email forward. What I do see evidence for is NORMA assessing the article, rejecting it as unsuitable for their journal, but recommending it for publication in another journal. There's nothing suspicious about that. The problem is that the original article was trash. There's some useful commentary here. That article makes the following point (emphasis mine).

In stark contradiction to the criticism above, many defenders of gender studies have claimed that Cogent Social Sciences is widely known to be a bad journal and more reputable ones would not have taken it seriously. The problem with that is that it is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), ProQuest Social Science Journals, the British Library, Cabell’s International and many more of the largest indices. It is not highlighted as a problem in the much-relied upon Beall’s list of predatory journals and was recommended to Lindsay and Boghossian by the NORMA journal. It is part of the highly-regarded Taylor & Francis Group which confirms that Cogent offers thorough scholarly peer review and has all the “traditional values and high standards associated with Taylor & Francis and Routledge at its core.”

Additionally, the article points out that while many people are jumping up and down shouting "It's a sample of one!", the content of the article was written deliberately to reflect existing content norms in gender studies articles published in a range of proper journals.

Even more significantly (and as shown by the first criticism), the language and “argument” of the hoax piece is indistinguishable from sincere gender studies publications from a range of academic journals. The Twitter account New Real Peer Review, which is dedicated to highlighting ludicrous theses, spent much of the day demonstrating this.

Here are just a few examples.

* Live and Active Cultures: Gender, Ethnicity, and “Greek” Yogurt in America

* Glaciers, gender, and science A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research

* The Pilates Pelvis: Racial Implications of the Immobile Hips

* When ‘Angelino’ squirrels don’t eat nuts: a feminist posthumanist politics of consumption across southern California

* Sex, Biological Functions and Social Norms: A Simple Constructivist Theory of Sex

* The Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins

[timoneill]

May 25, 2017 2:22:21 GMT fortigurn said:

I don't see any evidence for an automatic email forward. What I do see evidence for is NORMA assessing the article, rejecting it as unsuitable for their journal, but recommending it for publication in another journal. There's nothing suspicious about that.

There is actually good evidence that the "recommendation" e-mail was an automatic e-mail response, not an actual recommendation. See the detailed analysis by Eli Bosnick on the Serious Inquiries Only podcast. Shermer and his supposedly "sceptical" cheerleaders have screwed the pooch on this one.

[ignorantianescia]

May 25, 2017 2:22:21 GMT fortigurn said:

May 24, 2017 19:01:51 GMT ignorantianescia said:

I think it makes a huge difference if the NORMA editor rejects the article but personally redirects the authors to a vanity journal or if the editor simply rejects the article for publication and Taylor & Francis automatically sent an email with an offer for Cogent Social Sciences. The Skeptic article strongly suggests that it was in the same email, but I do not really trust Boghossian and Lindsay and this sociologist suggests it was an automatic email forward. So there doesn't seem to be clarity on whether the editor was actually involved.

I don't see any evidence for an automatic email forward. What I do see evidence for is NORMA assessing the article, rejecting it as unsuitable for their journal, but recommending it for publication in another journal. There's nothing suspicious about that. The problem is that the original article was trash.

Supporting what Tim wrote (I can't check the podcast rn, maybe it's the same source), an editor from NORMA is quoted here on the email referral.

When the authors revealed their hoax, they said that they first submitted their piece to NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, which is a scholarly journal published by the Nordic Association for Research on Men and Masculinities, and by Taylor & Francis. NORMA rejected the piece, but when it did so it suggested Cogent Social Sciences might be a good fit. (Journal transfers are common among publications that are part of large publishing organizations, and allow editors to suggest appropriate homes for a piece.)

Wednesday's statement from Cogent Social Sciences and Taylor & Francis said that the referral to Cogent Social Sciences was made "inadvertently."

One of the editors of NORMA, Ulf Mellström, a professor at the Center for Gender Studies at Sweden's Karlstad University, said via email that the referral was apparently automatically generated as part of the rejection process. Of the paper, he said that "we thought it was sheer nonsense" and that the intent was an outright rejection. NORMA didn't realize the automatic referral system was in place and has asked Taylor & Francis to remove it, Mellström said.

So one editor of NORMA has stated that it was due to an automatic referral.

Also it seems fair to note this from the same link:

Via email, James Lindsay, one of the authors of the hoax paper, said, "I am glad the journal has taken the paper down and is committed to improving its standards …. If this contributes to a body of evidence that the hoax was published by a journal with problems in their peer review process … then as that evidence mounts, we will follow it and conclude that our hoax has primarily drawn attention to the problem of standards in some open-access journals."

As to gender studies, he said, "Contrary to many of our critics, we do not claim that our hoax 'proved' that gender studies has a problem. The belief that there is a problem precedes, not follows, the hoax. We hope the increased attention on gender scholarship either vindicates the field, if it has no problems, or initiates the housecleaning it needs, if it does."

Which is, indeed, true. They don't make that statement in their paper, though they did write that it's indicative of a systemic problem:

“The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” underwent a blind peer-review process and yet was accepted for publication. This needs serious explaining. Part of the fault may fall on the open-access, pay-to-publish model, but the rest falls on the entire academic enterprise collectively referred to as “gender studies.” As we see it, gender studies in its current form needs to do some serious housecleaning.

Cogent Social Sciences also made a statement in that article:

As to how Cogent Social Sciences handled the piece, the statement from that journal said, "The article was received by a senior editor and sent out for peer review as is standard. Two reviewers agreed to review the paper and it was accepted with no changes by one reviewer, and with minor amends by the other. On investigation, although the two reviewers had relevant research interests, their expertise did not fully align with this subject matter and we do not believe that they were the right choice to review this paper."

It is indeed safe to say that their review system didn't work well.

May 25, 2017 2:22:21 GMT fortigurn said:

There's some useful commentary here. That article makes the following point (emphasis mine).

In stark contradiction to the criticism above, many defenders of gender studies have claimed that Cogent Social Sciences is widely known to be a bad journal and more reputable ones would not have taken it seriously. The problem with that is that it is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), ProQuest Social Science Journals, the British Library, Cabell’s International and many more of the largest indices. It is not highlighted as a problem in the much-relied upon Beall’s list of predatory journals and was recommended to Lindsay and Boghossian by the NORMA journal. It is part of the highly-regarded Taylor & Francis Group which confirms that Cogent offers thorough scholarly peer review and has all the “traditional values and high standards associated with Taylor & Francis and Routledge at its core.”

That argument only goes so far. DOAJ does have to weed out bad journals on occasion, being part of T & F could make it easier to get on such databases and Beall's list (which has been taken down by Beall) obviously isn't exhaustive. On the other hand, Cogent OA's high fees are on the high side compared to predatory pay-to-play journals, though the time it allows for peer review is significantly longer than those types of journal.

(For what it is worth, Areo Magazine seems to be liable to some of the same pitfalls as Skeptic Magazine.)

May 25, 2017 2:22:21 GMT fortigurn said:

Even more significantly (and as shown by the first criticism), the language and “argument” of the hoax piece is indistinguishable from sincere gender studies publications from a range of academic journals. The Twitter account New Real Peer Review, which is dedicated to highlighting ludicrous theses, spent much of the day demonstrating this.

Here are just a few examples.

* Live and Active Cultures: Gender, Ethnicity, and “Greek” Yogurt in America

* Glaciers, gender, and science A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research

* The Pilates Pelvis: Racial Implications of the Immobile Hips

* When ‘Angelino’ squirrels don’t eat nuts: a feminist posthumanist politics of consumption across southern California

* Sex, Biological Functions and Social Norms: A Simple Constructivist Theory of Sex

* The Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins

I agree several of these theses are weird, especially the one on squirrels, but the claim that the language and argument are indistinguishable is silly to make without an actual demonstration. (In fact, some of these theses don't seem that ludicrous.)

[endrefodstad]

I can only second Tim's recommendation of the Serious Inquiries Only podcast. The most recent episode:

seriouspod.com/sio45-james-lindsay-co-author-conceptual-penis-hoax-paper/

contains an interview with one of the co-authors, James Lindsay, in which there is a lot of backtracking and attempted smokescreening by the "skeptic".

[timoneill]

May 29, 2017 7:45:14 GMT endrefodstad said:

I can only second Tim's recommendation of the Serious Inquiries Only podcast. The most recent episode:

seriouspod.com/sio45-james-lindsay-co-author-conceptual-penis-hoax-paper/

contains an interview with one of the co-authors, James Lindsay, in which there is a lot of backtracking and attempted smokescreening by the "skeptic".

Yes, furious backpedalling that could set some kind of Olympic speed record. Lindsay came out of that exchange looking pretty shabby and the whole affair ended up boiling down to nothing much. That there are "pay to play" journals with no impact rating out there that will accept any old junk for cash is hardly a revelation. As I've been noting for years in relation to their biased bungling of history, these "sceptics" pretend to be objective and neutral but are nothing of the sort. And they tend to blunder constantly whenever they venture into the humanities or social sciences.

Some or even much of gender studies may well be dubious or politically motivated and a hell of a lot of it definitely is couched in obscurantist jargon. But this hamfisted stunt tells us much more about the biases and politics of the hoaxers than anything to do with the discipline these clowns were trying to target. That Dawkins, Harris, Shermer, Coyne and Pinker were so quick to crow about this speaks volumes.