the physicist who tried to debunk postmodernism

sorry rationalists but the sokal affair was not the own you think it was

References:

Music:
“Argos Farfish” by Sharhabil Ahmed

Script feedback from Jo Howard
Editing support from @costanzapolastri

Chapters
00:00:00 - Cold Open
00:01:50 - Introduction
00:06:52 - Part 1: The Sokal Affair, but Actually
00:16:10 - Part 2: All Publishing Is Kind of Bullshit
00:24:21 - Part 3: Alan Sokal Is a Bad Experimentalist
00:34:34 - Part 4: The Sokal Affair's Political Legacy
00:43:49 - Patreon Ad Break
00:44:44 - Part 5: How (Not) to Argue in Good Faith
00:50:16 - Discussion Question
00:52:24 - Final Thoughts
00:55:21 - Comment Sharing + Credits

[birdwaveracing]

"These MFs really thought they ate": a video essay.

[KilgoreTroutAsf]

Before I published my thesis, my PhD supervisor told me not to stress that much about the writing, because nobody actually reads the thesis itself past page 20. I ended up testing this by introducing three humorous misspellings in key parts of the argumentation which have, to this date, never been brought up to me, not even by the thesis tribunal.

[TJ]

i admire your optimism regarding the potential for positive and fruitful discourse on the internet. I completely gave up hope on that i think lol

[Guishan_Lingyou]

One of my math professors in grad school claimed that the book "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" is non-sense. His evidence was that he pretended to be reading from the book out loud to a few people, but was actually making up something he considered non-sense, and those few people didn't realized he wasn't actually reading the book. This professor was a very smart man and an accomplished mathematical logician. I was confused as to why he thought he had proved anything other than that people will take your actions at face-value in most cases.
Edit: typos

[karmabeast]

my understanding of Sokal is that he *literally made a postmodern critique* of academia, but because he had no idea what postmodernism actually is, he had to lie about his intentions. also, "social institutions are subject to social flaws" is the most lukewarm take known to man, man was a clown who couldn't make it past step 1

[rageoholic]

Pre-existing notions: Physics has had fake work scandals too. To paraphrase BobbyBroccoli: Science relies on the good faith of its participants.

[marcusbell]

"Thirty years ago a paper was published...."
Me: Ahh, the 80s.
"...in 1996, "
*dies of old age*

[Furore]

I know it's not 'the point',
but I really appreciate the effort you put into the aesthetic production.
Especially the music drops, every one is a banger.

[knate]

Oh my god, Social Text believes more in Free Speech than conservative pundits do.

[alexwebb]

Before I watch through the video my understanding as a godless postmodernist hell-bent on leveraging my job as a chemist toward nefarious ends probably on behalf of a bad actor state is that Sokal basically performed the equivalent of going to a bar's open mic night to play an instrument he didn't know and proceeded to declare that there are no standards in music any more and anyone could just walk into Madison Square Garden or The Gorge or something and play the recorder like a second grader

[chickenelafsworld]

My only engagement with the Sokal affair prior to this was a young earth creationist quoting him as a way to “prove” the scientific establishment is intentionally lying about the age of the earth.

[dkickelbick]

Your mentioning of the Foucault and Chomsky discussion made me wonder, that the difference comes from discussion vs. debate. Foucault / Chomsky was discussion with arguments and the goal to increase knowledge or to learn something new. But nowadays everything I see are debates. Debates are more a sport, a competition were you could win or loose and where the goal is not the increase in knowledge but to win. Which is in line with the competitive "nature" of USA's society

Probably, I am unfair but I am really fed up with this debates all over the place an no discussions any more. I miss these times and discussions.

[BlorgBlorgson-uqtt]

"Who knows maybe there's a version of the connection between shapes and psyches that actually does make some kind of sense..." Yes there

This is my first time watching on of your videos. I really enjoyed it! You asked for good-faith criticism so as a topologist I'm obliged to respond to 12:30 in this video.
Topology is concerned more with notions of proximity than with how many holes shapes have. I know you probably summarised for brevity but I don't think it's a helpful summary. It distracts from how topology is one of the most natural mathematical tools to apply to studying the mind. Everything in the brain is interlinked, so studying the topological structure of the brain network is fruitful! Furthermore, topological data analysis has been used in neuroscience. I recently attended a talk about how the topological structure of neural data for the visual cortex of mice brains helps us to understand better how optical signals are interpreted by the brain!

Saying topology studies "how many holes shapes have" is unfortunately common but it's not a good description of the field. It obfuscates the real applications of topology in neuroscience.

[FourbnTask]

Here's my feedback: more plants! These video backdrops do not look like a dense forest/jungle and I am personally offended. MOAR PLANTS

[jonathannoel]

I'm a math prof with prior knowledge of this topic. It has been a long time since I have felt like someone has convinced me so thoroughly that I was wrong. I feel exposed, in the best way. I learned something. I want to know what other biases I have. Working in a field where everyone shares a common set of biases makes it so hard to see your own. You've tapped into an important area of study combining science and sociology that I severely underestimated. Science would benefit from more people thinking about this more deeply.

[DahVoozel]

So is Sokal actually an evergreen example of confirmation bias strangling social sciences and political thinking because all of the people using Sokal's work as a "gotcha" of the "woke postmodernites" didn't read his article, didn't examine the journal it was published in, didn't examine the context in which it was published, and uncritically accept Sokal's crowning of his own experiment a success because it agrees with thier worldview?

[BlancheNeigefan]

My initial understanding: Sokal was allowed to publish an article he deemed nonsensical in a non specialist journal, whose standards did not allow them to call out his inaccuracies because they judged his work on other standards than those he was trying to elevate through his "trolling". Then he was like "gotcha" to the architecture journal or whatever and extended that critique to the arts and humanities while the original journal was just like ???

[luclaurent]

I wanted to comment on the fallibility of peer review. Dr. Fatima is definitely correct in that reviewers are human and they're busy, and both of those can contribute to them missing things. But there are also systemic reasons why reviewers are not as good as they could be. For one they often aren't paid for review work, so it can feel unreasonable for them to devote so much time and attention to what is essentially a favor for a journal, a for-profit organization. Additionally, the deadlines for review work don't always allow for enough time to do the type of deep research that is sometimes required.
Recently, my mother was reviewing a paper and discovered it included fabricated data. She realized this when she noticed one figure was the same as a previous figure just rotated and with different contrast (these two figures were supposed to be entirely different cell cultures). She was the only reviewer who alerted the journal to this. Initially she thought that this was probably due to the other reviewers only doing a quick skim because of time constraints and the fact that they were unpaid. But as she went through the tedious process of filing an academic misconduct complaint and attending meetings where she explained her accusations (all unpaid), she told me that she hoped it wasn't the case, but she wondered if someone else had noticed, but just didn't want to deal.

[insistence]

About half way through your video. What struck me is that the publication Sokal submitted his paper to was in fact not peer-reviewed. I always assumed it was.

[HorrorMakesUsHappy]

Finding my own blind spots (or having them pointed out) has always been both a challenge and a joy, and I greatly appreciate seeing someone else wanting to do the same. IMO it's the best kind of growth we can hope to achieve.

So far the only critique I can make for this video is that I feel you set up the perfect opportunity here, but failed to ask/answer, "Then how do we make [scientific publishing] better?"