WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.620 I want you to picture a dog park. Okay, I am 00:00:02.620 --> 00:00:05.320 picturing it. It is a sunny Tuesday in Portland, 00:00:05.459 --> 00:00:08.339 Oregon. You have got golden retrievers chasing 00:00:08.339 --> 00:00:12.560 tennis balls, maybe a pug sniffing a fire hydrant. 00:00:13.039 --> 00:00:15.580 Owners are standing around sipping coffee. It 00:00:15.580 --> 00:00:18.399 is just the most mundane, wholesome scene imaginable. 00:00:18.460 --> 00:00:21.480 Right. Just a normal Tuesday. Exactly. But now 00:00:21.480 --> 00:00:23.820 I want you to put on a very specific pair of 00:00:23.820 --> 00:00:26.600 glasses. You are an academic researcher. You 00:00:26.600 --> 00:00:29.239 look at that scene and you do not see dogs playing. 00:00:29.379 --> 00:00:31.940 You see a breeding ground for rape culture. Wow. 00:00:32.359 --> 00:00:34.920 And, you know, not just rape culture. You see 00:00:34.920 --> 00:00:37.439 queer performativity among the canines. Yeah. 00:00:37.460 --> 00:00:40.140 And you conclude that the way humans try to control 00:00:40.140 --> 00:00:42.880 these dogs is actually evidence of deep -seated 00:00:42.880 --> 00:00:45.159 gender bias in society. Right. And so you write 00:00:45.159 --> 00:00:47.679 this up. You use incredibly dense, impenetrable 00:00:47.679 --> 00:00:50.170 jargon. argue that dog parks are actually petri 00:00:50.170 --> 00:00:52.810 dishes for human moral corruption, and then you 00:00:52.810 --> 00:00:55.229 submit it to a prestigious academic journal. 00:00:55.719 --> 00:00:58.060 Specifically, gender, place, and culture. Yes. 00:00:58.299 --> 00:01:00.780 And here's the thing. It does not get rejected. 00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:02.939 It gets published. The reviewers do not just 00:01:02.939 --> 00:01:04.859 accept it. They call it incredibly innovative 00:01:04.859 --> 00:01:08.079 and rich in analysis. It sounds like a skit from 00:01:08.079 --> 00:01:10.239 a sketch comedy show, honestly. It really does. 00:01:10.640 --> 00:01:13.459 This is exactly what happened in 2018. And it 00:01:13.459 --> 00:01:15.900 wasn't just one paper. It was part of one of 00:01:15.900 --> 00:01:18.980 the most elaborate, controversial, and polarizing 00:01:18.980 --> 00:01:21.760 stings in the history of academia. It is absolutely 00:01:21.760 --> 00:01:25.379 wild. So today, we are doing a deep dive. into 00:01:25.379 --> 00:01:28.159 the grievance studies affair, which is also sometimes 00:01:28.159 --> 00:01:31.439 known as Sokol Squared. Right. We have combed 00:01:31.439 --> 00:01:33.739 through the papers, the emails, the media fallout, 00:01:33.760 --> 00:01:36.140 the academic rebuttals. Our mission today is 00:01:36.140 --> 00:01:38.719 to look at all of this source material and answer 00:01:38.719 --> 00:01:41.519 a really uncomfortable question. Did three people 00:01:41.519 --> 00:01:44.280 just prove that entire fields of university study 00:01:44.280 --> 00:01:47.060 are fraudulent? Or on the flip side, was this 00:01:47.060 --> 00:01:48.939 just a mean -spirited prank that proved nothing 00:01:48.939 --> 00:01:51.379 other than, well, liars can trick people who 00:01:51.379 --> 00:01:54.359 trust them? Exactly. It is a messy story. But 00:01:54.359 --> 00:01:56.599 the implications are huge because this touches 00:01:56.599 --> 00:01:58.840 on everything from how we define truth to how 00:01:58.840 --> 00:02:01.260 universities spend money to the very structure 00:02:01.260 --> 00:02:03.079 of how scientific knowledge is vetted in the 00:02:03.079 --> 00:02:06.739 first place. It really does. So let's start with 00:02:06.739 --> 00:02:09.800 the architects of this chaos. Who decides to 00:02:09.800 --> 00:02:12.979 spend a year writing fake papers about dog parks? 00:02:13.240 --> 00:02:15.699 So the trio behind this are James A. Lindsay, 00:02:15.919 --> 00:02:19.750 Peter Boghossian, and helen pluckrose and at 00:02:19.750 --> 00:02:23.090 the time they described themselves as left -wing 00:02:23.090 --> 00:02:26.449 liberal skeptics Left -wing liberal skeptics, 00:02:26.509 --> 00:02:28.349 that feels like an important distinction. It 00:02:28.349 --> 00:02:31.409 is hugely important. Because they weren't coming 00:02:31.409 --> 00:02:33.729 from the conservative right. They explicitly 00:02:33.729 --> 00:02:36.590 claimed they were trying to save the left from 00:02:36.590 --> 00:02:39.229 itself. Save the left from itself. That implies 00:02:39.229 --> 00:02:42.009 they saw some kind of rot inside the House. Exactly. 00:02:42.189 --> 00:02:45.310 Their target was a specific set of academic disciplines 00:02:45.310 --> 00:02:48.669 that they labeled grievance studies. What falls 00:02:48.669 --> 00:02:50.569 under that umbrella? They're looking at fields 00:02:50.569 --> 00:02:53.129 like gender studies, fat studies, queer theory, 00:02:53.349 --> 00:02:55.900 post -colonial studies. their hypothesis was 00:02:55.900 --> 00:02:57.979 that these fields had stopped being science in 00:02:57.979 --> 00:03:00.819 any traditional sense. Instead, they argued these 00:03:00.819 --> 00:03:03.360 fields had become ideology mills. Meaning they 00:03:03.360 --> 00:03:05.219 start with the conclusion and then just work 00:03:05.219 --> 00:03:07.759 backward. Precisely. The argument the hoaxers 00:03:07.759 --> 00:03:10.139 made. is that in these fields, you start with 00:03:10.139 --> 00:03:12.259 a grievance. For example, society is systemically 00:03:12.259 --> 00:03:14.500 sexist. And then you bend your research, your 00:03:14.500 --> 00:03:17.400 data, and your theory to confirm that grievance. 00:03:17.500 --> 00:03:20.139 So the idea is if you confirm the grievance, 00:03:20.139 --> 00:03:22.639 you get published. If you challenge it, you get 00:03:22.639 --> 00:03:25.020 rejected. Right. And so their mission was to 00:03:25.020 --> 00:03:28.879 prove that the emperor has no clothes. But to 00:03:28.879 --> 00:03:31.300 understand how they actually did it, we have 00:03:31.300 --> 00:03:33.099 to talk about the underlying philosophy they 00:03:33.099 --> 00:03:35.240 were attacking. Okay, lay it on me. This is where 00:03:35.240 --> 00:03:36.719 it gets a little technical, but we really need 00:03:36.719 --> 00:03:39.400 to unpack a term Helen Pluckrose uses constantly, 00:03:39.620 --> 00:03:43.560 which is applied postmodernism. Applied postmodernism. 00:03:43.580 --> 00:03:45.740 Okay, break that down for us. Think of this as 00:03:45.740 --> 00:03:49.139 the engine under the hood. Traditional postmodernism, 00:03:49.159 --> 00:03:51.419 going back to the 1960s and philosophers like 00:03:51.419 --> 00:03:54.879 Foucault, was all about radical skepticism. It 00:03:54.879 --> 00:03:57.020 questioned whether objective truth even exists 00:03:57.020 --> 00:03:59.750 at all. It argued that what we call knowledge 00:03:59.750 --> 00:04:02.509 is really just a product of power dynamics. Perfect. 00:04:02.590 --> 00:04:05.409 So biologists might say there are two sexes. 00:04:05.509 --> 00:04:08.169 And a traditional postmodernist would say that's 00:04:08.169 --> 00:04:10.909 not an objective fact. That's just a linguistic 00:04:10.909 --> 00:04:14.110 category created by a society that values binary. 00:04:14.349 --> 00:04:16.490 OK, I follow that. But where does the applied 00:04:16.490 --> 00:04:18.949 part come in? Pluckrose argues that something 00:04:18.949 --> 00:04:22.639 shifted in the late 80s and 90s. This new wave 00:04:22.639 --> 00:04:25.240 of scholars in gender theory or critical race 00:04:25.240 --> 00:04:28.379 theory kept the skepticism about science, but 00:04:28.379 --> 00:04:30.319 they completely dropped the skepticism about 00:04:30.319 --> 00:04:32.920 their own beliefs. Wait, so they do not believe 00:04:32.920 --> 00:04:35.939 in objective biological truth, but they do believe 00:04:35.939 --> 00:04:38.279 that systemic oppression is an objective reality. 00:04:38.759 --> 00:04:40.959 Exactly. That is the applied part. They apply 00:04:40.959 --> 00:04:43.560 postmodern deconstruction to things they dislike. 00:04:44.110 --> 00:04:47.009 like biology or Western structures, but they 00:04:47.009 --> 00:04:50.329 apply rigid, almost religious certainty to their 00:04:50.329 --> 00:04:54.120 own theories about privilege and power. It is 00:04:54.120 --> 00:04:56.759 like a paradox. It is. Pluckrose calls this the 00:04:56.759 --> 00:04:59.019 reification of the grievance. Okay, let me see 00:04:59.019 --> 00:05:01.040 if I have this right. The hoaxer's theory was, 00:05:01.199 --> 00:05:03.420 if I can speak this specific language, if I can 00:05:03.420 --> 00:05:05.540 mimic this discourse of power and privilege, 00:05:05.620 --> 00:05:08.379 I can say literally anything, no matter how absurd, 00:05:08.579 --> 00:05:10.819 and the gatekeepers will just let me in. That 00:05:10.819 --> 00:05:12.500 was the bet. Yeah. And I should mention, they 00:05:12.500 --> 00:05:15.139 were inspired by an earlier hoax, the Alan Sokol 00:05:15.139 --> 00:05:18.079 hoax in 1996, where a physicist got a nonsense 00:05:18.079 --> 00:05:20.319 paper published in the cultural studies journal 00:05:20.319 --> 00:05:22.980 Social Text. Right, hence the nickname Sokol 00:05:22.980 --> 00:05:26.279 Squared. Exactly. But to prove their point this 00:05:26.279 --> 00:05:28.839 time, they went industrial. This wasn't a one 00:05:28.839 --> 00:05:31.959 -off prank. They spent 10 months across 2017 00:05:31.959 --> 00:05:36.199 and 2018 writing 20 distinct academic papers. 00:05:36.360 --> 00:05:39.600 20 papers in 10 months. That is a massive undertaking. 00:05:40.019 --> 00:05:42.939 It was a full -time job. They created fake authors 00:05:42.939 --> 00:05:45.379 like the fictional Helen Wilson for the dog park 00:05:45.379 --> 00:05:48.259 paper. They even borrowed the identity of a real 00:05:48.259 --> 00:05:51.040 retired professor, Richard Baldwin, to add a 00:05:51.040 --> 00:05:53.180 veneer of credibility to some of the submissions. 00:05:53.420 --> 00:05:55.000 And they didn't just write gibberish, right? 00:05:55.100 --> 00:05:57.459 This wasn't just mashing the keyboard. They actually 00:05:57.459 --> 00:05:59.779 studied the material they were mocking. That 00:05:59.779 --> 00:06:02.360 is the truly scary part. They did their homework. 00:06:02.560 --> 00:06:04.500 They read the leading papers in these fields. 00:06:04.579 --> 00:06:06.899 They learned the lexicon. They figured out that 00:06:06.899 --> 00:06:08.339 if you want to get published in fat studies, 00:06:08.639 --> 00:06:10.819 you need to use terms like fat affirming and 00:06:10.819 --> 00:06:12.779 body size normativity. They learned the secret 00:06:12.779 --> 00:06:14.800 handshake. They absolutely did. Let's look at 00:06:14.800 --> 00:06:16.300 the results because some of these titles are 00:06:16.300 --> 00:06:18.839 just, well, they defy satire. We already mentioned 00:06:18.839 --> 00:06:22.259 the dog park paper. Right. Human reactions to 00:06:22.259 --> 00:06:25.100 rape culture and queer performativity at the 00:06:25.100 --> 00:06:27.660 dog park. Again, published in Gender, Place, 00:06:27.759 --> 00:06:30.480 and Culture. And the reviewers praised it for 00:06:30.480 --> 00:06:33.899 its reflexivity. Reflexivity. That is a buzzword 00:06:33.899 --> 00:06:36.120 we should flag for a second. What does that actually 00:06:36.120 --> 00:06:39.100 mean in this context? Well, in traditional sociology, 00:06:39.579 --> 00:06:42.160 reflexivity usually means the researcher is aware 00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:45.949 of their own bias. But in this context, the hoaxers 00:06:45.949 --> 00:06:48.769 used it to mask a total lack of data. How so? 00:06:49.029 --> 00:06:50.910 Instead of providing evidence, they just wrote 00:06:50.910 --> 00:06:53.529 page after age about how they felt about the 00:06:53.529 --> 00:06:55.910 dogs and how their own whiteness impacted their 00:06:55.910 --> 00:06:57.790 interpretation of the dogs. And the reviewers 00:06:57.790 --> 00:07:00.069 ate it up? They loved it. They saw it as deep 00:07:00.069 --> 00:07:02.910 engagement rather than a lack of rigor. Wow. 00:07:03.709 --> 00:07:06.009 OK, then there was the paper that I think is 00:07:06.009 --> 00:07:07.730 arguably the most damning of the whole bunch, 00:07:07.829 --> 00:07:09.970 the Mein Kampf rewrite. Oh, this is the one that 00:07:09.970 --> 00:07:12.170 really shocked the public. They took a chapter 00:07:12.170 --> 00:07:14.569 from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. They kept the 00:07:14.569 --> 00:07:17.329 exact structure of the arguments, but they just 00:07:17.329 --> 00:07:19.649 swapped the variables. So wherever Hitler talked 00:07:19.649 --> 00:07:22.170 about Jews, they swapped it for white men or 00:07:22.170 --> 00:07:25.470 privileged groups. Exactly. Wherever he used 00:07:25.470 --> 00:07:28.980 Nazi rhetoric, they swapped it. for fashionable 00:07:28.980 --> 00:07:31.699 intersectional feminist jargon. And they titled 00:07:31.699 --> 00:07:34.300 it Our Struggle is My Struggle. Which is the 00:07:34.300 --> 00:07:36.759 literal English translation of Mein Kampf. That 00:07:36.759 --> 00:07:39.899 is incredibly bold. And it was accepted? It was 00:07:39.899 --> 00:07:42.420 accepted by Ophelia, which is a peer -reviewed 00:07:42.420 --> 00:07:44.560 journal for women and social work. Just pause 00:07:44.560 --> 00:07:46.879 on that for a second. Let that sink in. A feminist 00:07:46.879 --> 00:07:49.100 journal accepted a paper that was structurally 00:07:49.100 --> 00:07:51.920 fascist simply because the target of the hate 00:07:51.920 --> 00:07:54.560 was acceptable to them. That is the implication 00:07:54.560 --> 00:07:57.329 the hoaxers drew. It suggests that the reviewers 00:07:57.329 --> 00:07:59.310 weren't looking at the logic or the morality 00:07:59.310 --> 00:08:01.810 of the argument at all. They were just scanning 00:08:01.810 --> 00:08:04.750 for the right moral sentiments. As long as the 00:08:04.750 --> 00:08:07.149 paper was attacking privilege, the underlying 00:08:07.149 --> 00:08:09.430 fascist structure was completely invisible to 00:08:09.430 --> 00:08:11.810 them. There were others, too. The dildo paper 00:08:11.810 --> 00:08:13.990 comes to mind. I cannot believe we are talking 00:08:13.990 --> 00:08:16.089 about this on a deep dive, but here we are. We 00:08:16.089 --> 00:08:17.990 have to cover the sources. The title of that 00:08:17.990 --> 00:08:20.699 one was Going In Through the Back Door. It argued 00:08:20.699 --> 00:08:22.920 that straight men could cure their transphobia 00:08:22.920 --> 00:08:26.139 and toxic masculinity by engaging in self -penetration 00:08:26.139 --> 00:08:28.779 with sex toys. And that was published. Published 00:08:28.779 --> 00:08:30.819 in Sexuality and Culture. And let's not forget 00:08:30.819 --> 00:08:33.320 the one about fat bodybuilding. Right. Who are 00:08:33.320 --> 00:08:36.279 they to judge? Overcoming Anthropometry and a 00:08:36.279 --> 00:08:39.080 Framework for Fat Bodybuilding. Published in 00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:42.139 Fat Studies. What was the argument there? It 00:08:42.139 --> 00:08:44.299 argued that we should include fat bodybuilding 00:08:44.299 --> 00:08:47.909 as a legitimate sport. Essentially ignoring the 00:08:47.909 --> 00:08:50.450 physical reality of what bodybuilding is and 00:08:50.450 --> 00:08:52.830 arguing that excluding fat people from bodybuilding 00:08:52.830 --> 00:08:56.610 displays was a form of bigotry. So they are churning 00:08:56.610 --> 00:08:58.809 these out. They have 20 papers in the pipeline. 00:08:59.110 --> 00:09:02.070 What was the final scorecard when the clock finally 00:09:02.070 --> 00:09:04.649 ran out on this project? Well, they didn't bat 00:09:04.649 --> 00:09:07.639 a thousand. Out of the 20 papers submitted, four 00:09:07.639 --> 00:09:09.960 were published online, three more were accepted 00:09:09.960 --> 00:09:11.840 but hadn't been printed yet, six were outright 00:09:11.840 --> 00:09:14.639 rejected, and seven were still sitting in peer 00:09:14.639 --> 00:09:16.860 review and the story broke. So seven out of 20 00:09:16.860 --> 00:09:19.740 basically got the green light. That is a 35 % 00:09:19.740 --> 00:09:22.679 acceptance rate. In the world of academic publishing, 00:09:22.860 --> 00:09:26.879 is that high? For top -tier journals, it is astonishingly 00:09:26.879 --> 00:09:29.690 high. especially for authors with no previous 00:09:29.690 --> 00:09:32.789 track record who are using fake data and writing 00:09:32.789 --> 00:09:35.690 intentionally absurd arguments. Usually the rejection 00:09:35.690 --> 00:09:38.029 rate for these prestige journals is massively 00:09:38.029 --> 00:09:40.669 high. You mentioned when the story broke because 00:09:40.669 --> 00:09:42.309 they didn't actually get to finish the experiment, 00:09:42.389 --> 00:09:44.409 right? I read the plan was to keep going until 00:09:44.409 --> 00:09:47.250 January of 2019. No, the wheels came off early 00:09:47.250 --> 00:09:50.110 in the summer of 2018. It actually started with 00:09:50.110 --> 00:09:52.350 the dog park paper. What happened? The editors 00:09:52.350 --> 00:09:55.029 at Gender, Place and Culture started trying to 00:09:55.029 --> 00:09:58.529 verify Helen Wilson. They couldn't find a university 00:09:58.529 --> 00:10:00.809 record for her. They couldn't find an online 00:10:00.809 --> 00:10:02.850 footprint. Because she didn't exist. Exactly. 00:10:02.850 --> 00:10:05.149 And at the exact same time, the Wall Street Journal 00:10:05.149 --> 00:10:07.690 was sniffing around. A reporter named Jillian 00:10:07.690 --> 00:10:09.649 K. Melchior figured out something was wrong. 00:10:09.929 --> 00:10:11.990 So the hoaxers realized they were about to be 00:10:11.990 --> 00:10:13.889 outed, and they decided to go on the offensive. 00:10:14.190 --> 00:10:17.269 They blew their own cover. Yes. In October 2018, 00:10:17.549 --> 00:10:19.590 they admitted everything to the Wall Street Journal. 00:10:19.899 --> 00:10:22.639 And they released this massive Google Drive archive 00:10:22.639 --> 00:10:25.559 containing all the papers, the drafts, and crucially, 00:10:25.659 --> 00:10:29.019 the reviewer comments. And that is when the academic 00:10:29.019 --> 00:10:31.659 world just exploded. It was like a bomb went 00:10:31.659 --> 00:10:33.799 off in the faculty lounge. Explosion is the right 00:10:33.799 --> 00:10:36.980 word. You immediately saw two completely entrenched 00:10:36.980 --> 00:10:40.039 narratives form. On one side, you had the hero's 00:10:40.039 --> 00:10:41.740 narrative. Who were the cheerleaders for this? 00:10:42.269 --> 00:10:44.990 Well, you had some very prominent public intellectuals. 00:10:45.049 --> 00:10:48.190 Yasha Monk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, 00:10:48.470 --> 00:10:50.950 is the one who coined the term Sokol squared. 00:10:51.250 --> 00:10:53.769 What was his take? He called the result hilarious 00:10:53.769 --> 00:10:56.649 and delightful. He said it proved that these 00:10:56.649 --> 00:10:59.049 journals cannot distinguish between genuine scholarship 00:10:59.049 --> 00:11:02.429 and morally troubling bullshit. Morally troubling 00:11:02.429 --> 00:11:04.610 bullshit. That is quite a quote. Steven Pinker 00:11:04.610 --> 00:11:06.250 and Richard Dawkins jumped in, too, didn't they? 00:11:06.330 --> 00:11:09.269 They did. Pinker basically asked, is there any 00:11:09.269 --> 00:11:11.750 idea so outlandish it will not be published in 00:11:11.750 --> 00:11:14.730 these journals? And Dawkins defended Bogosian 00:11:14.730 --> 00:11:17.389 specifically. He compared the whole sting to 00:11:17.389 --> 00:11:20.730 satire like George Orwell's Animal Farm. using 00:11:20.730 --> 00:11:23.190 fiction to reveal a deeper truth. And Jonathan 00:11:23.190 --> 00:11:25.470 Haidt, the social psychologist, I know he weighed 00:11:25.470 --> 00:11:29.429 in. Yes, he called them whistleblowers. He said 00:11:29.429 --> 00:11:32.690 they risked their careers to expose a subculture 00:11:32.690 --> 00:11:36.330 that tolerates intellectual fraud. The core argument 00:11:36.330 --> 00:11:38.809 from all these supporters was simple. If the 00:11:38.809 --> 00:11:42.309 experts cannot spot a fake gold bar, then their 00:11:42.309 --> 00:11:45.070 expertise on gold is worthless. Which seems like 00:11:45.070 --> 00:11:48.340 a slam -dunk argument at first glance. But, and 00:11:48.340 --> 00:11:50.559 this is crucial for us to cover impartially, 00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:53.600 there was a very strong counter argument. The 00:11:53.600 --> 00:11:55.299 villain's narrative wasn't just people saying, 00:11:55.360 --> 00:11:56.940 oh, you hurt our feelings. There are some really 00:11:56.940 --> 00:11:59.360 substantial scientific critiques of what they 00:11:59.360 --> 00:12:02.039 did. Absolutely. And we need to give these weight. 00:12:02.399 --> 00:12:04.120 because they highlight the limitations of what 00:12:04.120 --> 00:12:06.539 the hoax actually proved. The biggest critique 00:12:06.539 --> 00:12:08.460 came from scientists like Sarah Richardson at 00:12:08.460 --> 00:12:10.840 Harvard. She pointed out a fatal flaw in their 00:12:10.840 --> 00:12:13.259 methodology. What was the flaw? The lack of control 00:12:13.259 --> 00:12:15.419 group. Break that down for us. What would a control 00:12:15.419 --> 00:12:18.399 group even look like in an academic hoax? Well, 00:12:18.500 --> 00:12:20.620 the hoaxers claimed that grievance studies are 00:12:20.620 --> 00:12:23.299 uniquely corrupt. But to prove they are uniquely 00:12:23.299 --> 00:12:25.379 corrupt, you would also need to submit freak 00:12:25.379 --> 00:12:28.480 papers to other fields, like sociology, economics, 00:12:28.840 --> 00:12:31.179 maybe even physics, and see if they get rejected. 00:12:31.470 --> 00:12:34.809 Ah, I see. So if I submit a total nonsense paper 00:12:34.809 --> 00:12:37.269 to an economics journal and they publish it too, 00:12:37.409 --> 00:12:39.289 then the problem isn't grievance studies. The 00:12:39.289 --> 00:12:41.509 problem is just that peer review is broken everywhere. 00:12:41.850 --> 00:12:44.629 Exactly. Because they didn't test other fields, 00:12:44.850 --> 00:12:47.610 Richardson argued you cannot scientifically claim 00:12:47.610 --> 00:12:51.009 this is a problem specific to gender or race 00:12:51.009 --> 00:12:53.450 studies. It might just be a problem with the 00:12:53.450 --> 00:12:55.679 process of publishing itself. That is a very 00:12:55.679 --> 00:12:57.860 valid point. There is also the argument about 00:12:57.860 --> 00:13:00.340 the trust model of peer review. Yes, this was 00:13:00.340 --> 00:13:02.759 Carl T. Bergstrom's point. He is a biologist. 00:13:02.940 --> 00:13:05.179 He noted that peer review is not designed to 00:13:05.179 --> 00:13:07.899 catch deliberate fraudsters. It operates on good 00:13:07.899 --> 00:13:09.879 faith. Meaning what exactly? Meaning if you tell 00:13:09.879 --> 00:13:13.039 a reviewer, I observed 1 ,000 dogs at a park, 00:13:13.200 --> 00:13:16.139 the reviewer assumes you aren't lying. They check 00:13:16.139 --> 00:13:18.519 if your conclusion logically matches your data. 00:13:18.659 --> 00:13:20.879 They do not send a private investigator to check 00:13:20.879 --> 00:13:23.480 if your data is real. So if I lie about the data, 00:13:23.580 --> 00:13:25.740 I can trick a physics journal just as easily 00:13:25.740 --> 00:13:28.179 as a gender studies journal. Theoretically, yes. 00:13:29.519 --> 00:13:31.759 Bergstrom argued that tricking a system built 00:13:31.759 --> 00:13:35.139 on trust proves nothing other than that you are 00:13:35.139 --> 00:13:38.019 willing to violate community norms. He basically 00:13:38.019 --> 00:13:40.240 said, congratulations, you prove that liars can 00:13:40.240 --> 00:13:42.539 trick people. But wait, the hoaxers did have 00:13:42.539 --> 00:13:44.460 a rebuttal to this, didn't they? It's not like 00:13:44.460 --> 00:13:47.059 they only targeted the fringe journals. That 00:13:47.059 --> 00:13:49.980 is true. They did submit to sociology journals, 00:13:50.159 --> 00:13:52.799 which is a much more established data -driven 00:13:52.799 --> 00:13:56.360 field. And interestingly, all the papers submitted 00:13:56.360 --> 00:13:59.460 to sociology journals were rejected. Oh, so the 00:13:59.460 --> 00:14:02.000 control groups sort of did exist and it worked. 00:14:02.200 --> 00:14:04.840 In a limited way, yes. It suggests that fields 00:14:04.840 --> 00:14:07.879 relying on hard data were more resistant to the 00:14:07.879 --> 00:14:10.720 nonsense than the fields relying purely on discourse 00:14:10.720 --> 00:14:13.460 and theory. Also, the journals with higher impact 00:14:13.460 --> 00:14:15.399 factors were more likely to reject the papers. 00:14:15.799 --> 00:14:18.340 So some standards did hold up. Beyond the scientific 00:14:18.340 --> 00:14:20.519 critique, there was also just a lot of anger 00:14:20.519 --> 00:14:24.200 about the wasted resources. Huge anger. Reviewers 00:14:24.200 --> 00:14:26.720 are unpaid volunteers. They're academics doing 00:14:26.720 --> 00:14:28.539 this on their nights and weekends. They spent 00:14:28.539 --> 00:14:30.919 hours giving detailed feedback to Helen Wilson, 00:14:31.100 --> 00:14:33.919 who doesn't exist. A group of professors at Portland 00:14:33.919 --> 00:14:36.000 State actually wrote an open letter about this. 00:14:36.139 --> 00:14:38.659 They called the project spiteful and said it 00:14:38.659 --> 00:14:41.320 showed a perverse interest in public humiliation 00:14:41.320 --> 00:14:44.789 rather than actual scholarship. They argued this 00:14:44.789 --> 00:14:47.289 wasn't research, it was just content creation 00:14:47.289 --> 00:14:50.490 for YouTube. Speaking of Portland State, we have 00:14:50.490 --> 00:14:52.610 to talk about the fallout for the authors themselves. 00:14:53.409 --> 00:14:55.789 Because this wasn't just a theoretical debate 00:14:55.789 --> 00:14:58.350 on Twitter. Peter Boghossian was a professor 00:14:58.350 --> 00:15:01.029 at Portland State. And the university went after 00:15:01.029 --> 00:15:04.889 him. They initiated a formal research misconduct 00:15:04.889 --> 00:15:07.409 inquiry. But the charge was really surprising. 00:15:08.029 --> 00:15:10.649 They didn't charge him with fraud, exactly. They 00:15:10.649 --> 00:15:12.830 charged him with conducting human subject research 00:15:12.830 --> 00:15:15.250 without approval. Human subjects. But they didn't 00:15:15.250 --> 00:15:17.690 study humans. They studied journals. Well, the 00:15:17.690 --> 00:15:19.870 university argued that the editors and the reviewers 00:15:19.870 --> 00:15:23.149 were the human subjects. Boghossian was running 00:15:23.149 --> 00:15:25.250 a psychological experiment on them to see how 00:15:25.250 --> 00:15:27.190 they would react to fake data. And that requires 00:15:27.190 --> 00:15:29.710 oversight. Yes. In academia, you need an ethics 00:15:29.710 --> 00:15:31.929 board, an institutional review board, or IRB 00:15:31.929 --> 00:15:34.610 to sign off on any experiment involving people. 00:15:34.809 --> 00:15:37.210 He obviously didn't get that. That feels technically 00:15:37.210 --> 00:15:40.250 true, but also maybe a bit like a bureaucratic 00:15:40.250 --> 00:15:42.570 weaponization of the rules. It is definitely 00:15:42.570 --> 00:15:45.830 a gray area. And his supporters argued it's just 00:15:45.830 --> 00:15:48.450 an excuse to punish him for exposing the university's 00:15:48.450 --> 00:15:52.889 ideological bias. But the charge stuck. Bogusian 00:15:52.889 --> 00:15:55.330 eventually resigned from the university, citing 00:15:55.330 --> 00:15:57.730 the harassment and what he called the ideological 00:15:57.730 --> 00:16:00.169 constriction of the institution. And what about 00:16:00.169 --> 00:16:02.250 the papers themselves, the ones that got published? 00:16:02.570 --> 00:16:04.809 Retracted, scrubbed from the record completely. 00:16:05.009 --> 00:16:07.549 They exist now only as artifacts of the scandal. 00:16:07.809 --> 00:16:10.409 So here we are looking back at this years later. 00:16:10.509 --> 00:16:13.049 The dust has settled. What are we actually left 00:16:13.049 --> 00:16:16.289 with from this deep dive? It is a really complicated 00:16:16.289 --> 00:16:19.090 legacy. On one hand, you could argue the hoaxers 00:16:19.090 --> 00:16:21.590 undeniably proved that there is an echo chamber 00:16:21.590 --> 00:16:24.450 in these specific fields. They proved that if 00:16:24.450 --> 00:16:26.690 you validate the political biases of the reviewers, 00:16:26.970 --> 00:16:29.409 your work doesn't need to make logical sense. 00:16:29.570 --> 00:16:32.090 Right. You can literally publish a fascist argument 00:16:32.090 --> 00:16:34.769 if it is dressed up in feminist language. That 00:16:34.769 --> 00:16:36.830 is a terrifying realization for the state of 00:16:36.830 --> 00:16:38.830 academic knowledge. But on the other hand... 00:16:38.830 --> 00:16:40.970 On the other hand, did they prove these fields 00:16:40.970 --> 00:16:43.980 have absolutely no value? Probably not. What 00:16:43.980 --> 00:16:46.179 they proved is that they have a massive quality 00:16:46.179 --> 00:16:49.320 control problem. And they proved that the boundary 00:16:49.320 --> 00:16:53.299 between high theory and utter nonsense is dangerously 00:16:53.299 --> 00:16:55.960 thin. That is the part that really sticks with 00:16:55.960 --> 00:16:57.980 me. There is a scholar we looked at in the sources, 00:16:58.259 --> 00:17:01.059 Mikko Lagerspets, who analyzed this whole affair. 00:17:01.259 --> 00:17:04.059 And he pointed out that the line between the 00:17:04.059 --> 00:17:06.960 hoax and the real thing became completely blurred. 00:17:07.460 --> 00:17:10.920 Yes. The hoaxers got so good at using the jargon 00:17:10.920 --> 00:17:13.279 that they were effectively producing the very 00:17:13.279 --> 00:17:15.480 thing they were mocking. It is like if I write 00:17:15.480 --> 00:17:18.160 a poem specifically to mock modern poetry, but 00:17:18.160 --> 00:17:20.140 it turns out to be a really good poem by their 00:17:20.140 --> 00:17:22.900 standards. Am I a satirist or am I just a poet? 00:17:23.259 --> 00:17:25.680 Exactly. And if the experts cannot tell the difference, 00:17:25.720 --> 00:17:28.079 does the intent of the author even matter? If 00:17:28.079 --> 00:17:30.680 the content is identical, but one author is sincere 00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:33.220 and the other is joking and the journal treats 00:17:33.220 --> 00:17:35.839 them exactly the same. What does that say about 00:17:35.839 --> 00:17:37.930 the content itself? It implies the content. intent 00:17:37.930 --> 00:17:40.390 itself is meaningless outside of having the right 00:17:40.390 --> 00:17:42.569 intent or the right buzzwords. It really does. 00:17:42.769 --> 00:17:45.269 It brings it all back to you, the listener. Why 00:17:45.269 --> 00:17:47.309 does this matter to someone who isn't an academic 00:17:47.309 --> 00:17:50.250 fighting for tenure? Because these ideas do not 00:17:50.250 --> 00:17:53.109 stay in the academic journals. The concepts of 00:17:53.109 --> 00:17:56.430 fragility, implicit bias, structural oppression, 00:17:56.730 --> 00:17:59.289 these are now standard parts of corporate HR 00:17:59.289 --> 00:18:01.609 training, school curricula, and public policy. 00:18:01.980 --> 00:18:05.420 and they originate in these exact grievance studies 00:18:05.420 --> 00:18:08.160 departments. So if the factory making the ideas 00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:10.859 has no quality control, then the products we 00:18:10.859 --> 00:18:13.980 are using in society might be defective. If the 00:18:13.980 --> 00:18:16.519 research backing a new law or a new corporate 00:18:16.519 --> 00:18:19.640 policy is susceptible to this kind of basic manipulation, 00:18:20.039 --> 00:18:23.160 that matters for everyone. It matters for how 00:18:23.160 --> 00:18:26.220 we hire, how we teach, and how we govern. It 00:18:26.220 --> 00:18:28.079 leaves us with a really provocative thought to 00:18:28.079 --> 00:18:30.119 walk away with. We know they got a rewrite of 00:18:30.119 --> 00:18:32.480 Minkoff accepted just by using the right academic 00:18:32.480 --> 00:18:35.079 buzzwords. We do know that for a fact. So take 00:18:35.079 --> 00:18:37.220 a look at the headlines today. Look at the new 00:18:37.220 --> 00:18:39.759 studies constantly cited in your news feed. How 00:18:39.759 --> 00:18:42.039 much of what we accept as settled social science 00:18:42.039 --> 00:18:44.299 is actually rigorous truth? And how much is just 00:18:44.299 --> 00:18:46.279 sophisticated jargon dressed up to look like 00:18:46.279 --> 00:18:49.160 knowledge? And without another massive hoax, 00:18:49.220 --> 00:18:51.059 how would we ever really know the difference? 00:18:51.539 --> 00:18:53.579 That is a thought that will keep you up at night. 00:18:54.140 --> 00:18:56.259 thanks for joining us on this deep dive into 00:18:56.259 --> 00:18:58.359 the grievance studies affair stay curious