Proceedings Start Against ‘Sokal Squared’ Hoax Professor

Mike Nayna

Portland State University has started disciplinary proceedings against Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy who co-authored a series of bogus research papers that parody what the authors dismiss as “grievance studies.”

The Oregon university’s institutional review board concluded that Boghossian’s participation in the elaborate hoax had violated Portland State’s ethical guidelines, according to documents Boghossian posted online. The university is considering a further charge that he had falsified data, the documents indicate.

Last month Portland State’s vice president for research and graduate studies, Mark R. McLellan, ordered Boghossian to undergo training on human-subjects research as a condition for getting further studies approved. In addition, McLellan said he had referred the matter to the president and provost because Boghossian’s behavior “raises ethical issues of concern.”

Boghossian and his supporters have gone on the offensive with an online press kit that links to emails from Portland State administrators. It also includes a video filmed by a documentary filmmaker that shows Boghossian reading an email that asks him to appear before the institutional review board in October. In the video, Boghossian discusses the implications of potentially being found responsible for professional misconduct. He’s speaking with his co-authors, Helen Pluckrose, a self-described “exile from the humanities” who studies medieval religious writings about women, and James A. Lindsay, an author and mathematician.

“I think that they will do everything and anything in their power to get me out,” Boghossian says, “and I think this is the first shot in that.”

Portland State officials said they could not discuss the details of the case because it involves a personnel matter, but they did not dispute the authenticity of the documents posted online.

The three authors, who describe themselves as leftists, spent 10 months writing 20 hoax papers they submitted to reputable journals in gender, race, sexuality, and related fields. Seven were accepted, four were published online, and three were in the process of being published when questions raised in October by a skeptical Wall Street Journal editorial writer forced them to halt their project.

One of their papers, about canine rape culture in dog parks in Portland, Ore., was initially recognized for excellence by the journal Gender, Place, and Culture, the authors reported.

The hoax was dubbed “Sokal Squared,” after a similar stunt pulled in 1996 by Alan Sokal, then a physicist at New York University.

After their ruse was revealed, the three authors described their project in an October article in the webzine Areo, which Pluckrose edits. Their goal, they wrote, was to “to study, understand, and expose the reality of grievance studies, which is corrupting academic research.” They contend that scholarship that tends to social grievances now dominates some fields, where students and others are bullied into adhering to scholars’ worldviews, while lax publishing standards allow the publication of clearly ludicrous articles if the topic is politically fashionable.

Since Boghossian was the only one of the trio working for a university, he had the most to lose. In October, McLellan wrote to Boghossian, telling him the university had decided to open an investigation into possible research misconduct, according to the posted documents. “The specific research-misconduct allegation I am asking the [institutional review] committee to review is that you may have intentionally either falsified or fabricated research data,” McLellan wrote.

McLellan told Boghossian to turn over all research materials related to an article titled “Expression of Concern: Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon.” The article was published in Gender, Place, and Culture, which later retracted it after the author’s identity couldn’t be verified.

McLellan asked Boghossian to reveal any evidence that he had received approval from the university’s institutional review board for research involving both human and animal behavior.

In November the investigating committee reported that the dog-park article contained knowingly fabricated data and thus constituted research misconduct. The review board also determined that the hoax project met the definition for human-subjects research because it involved interacting with journal editors and reviewers. Any research involving human subjects (even duped journal editors, apparently) needs IRB approval first, according to university policy.

“Your efforts to conduct human-subjects research at PSU without a submitted nor approved protocol is a clear violation of the policies of your employer,” McLellan wrote in an email to Boghossian.

The decision to move ahead with disciplinary action came after a group of faculty members published a letter in the student newspaper decrying the hoax as “lies peddled to journals, masquerading as articles.” These “lies” are designed “not to critique, educate, or inspire change in flawed systems,” they wrote, “but rather to humiliate entire fields while the authors gin up publicity for themselves without having made any scholarly contributions whatsoever.” Such behavior, they wrote, hurts the reputations of the university as well as honest scholars who work there. “Worse yet, it jeopardizes the students’ reputations, as their degrees in the process may become devalued.”

In a statement on Monday, McLellan said the university had finished its investigation and communicated its findings to Boghossian, but he added that the matter was supposed to be kept confidential.

“Research involving human subjects requires approval of PSU’s Institutional Review Board (IRB),” he wrote. That 15-member peer-review board ensures compliance with federal policy for the protection of human subjects.

Meanwhile, within the first 24 hours of news leaking about the proceedings against him, more than 100 scholars had written letters defending Boghossian, according to his media site, which posted some of them.

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, was among the high-profile scholars who defended him. “Criticism and open debate are the lifeblood of academia; they are what differentiate universities from organs of dogma and propaganda,” Pinker wrote. “If scholars feel they have been subject to unfair criticism, they should explain why they think the critic is wrong. It should be beneath them to try to punish and silence him.”

Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, author, and professor emeritus at the University of Oxford, had this to say: “If the members of your committee of inquiry object to the very idea of satire as a form of creative expression, they should come out honestly and say so. But to pretend that this is a matter of publishing false data is so obviously ridiculous that one cannot help suspecting an ulterior motive.”

Sokal, who is now at University College London, wrote that Boghossian’s hoax had served the public interest and that the university would become a “laughingstock” in academe as well as the public sphere if it insisted that duping editors constituted research on human subjects.

One of Boghossian’s co-author, Lindsay, urged him in the video they posted to emphasize that the project amounted to an audit of certain sectors of academic research. “People inside the system aren’t allowed to question the system? What kind of Orwellian stuff is that?” Lindsay asked.

Meanwhile, debate between those who view the hoax as a public service and those who condemn it as fraud continues on Twitter.

Unpopular Opinion:

1) Yes, Boghossian violated PSU’s research ethics and should be punished.

2) No, he should not be fired. In fact, the punishment should be very mild (e.g. a warning, attending a tutorial on research ethics).

— Jeffrey Sachs (@JeffreyASachs) January 7, 2019

Please share this video to support @peterboghossian, who is under disciplinary review by Portland State University basically for being a whistleblower.https://t.co/0l88skszsp

— Drew Robbins (@DrewTRobbins) January 6, 2019

This isn’t the first time Portland State has investigated a scholar who produced controversial work. Last year Bruce Gilley, a professor of political science, created an uproar by writing an article that defended colonialism.

A university spokesman confirmed that Portland State’s diversity office had opened an investigation into Gilley but denied it was politically motivated or focused on the article.

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.