<story><title>Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship</title><url>https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Yoric</author><text>While this article is interesting, it does start from a pretty strong assumption: that the problem is specific to one branch (or family of branches) of Academia.&lt;p&gt;I remember at least two similar scandals in very much non-social-justice-related branches of Academia. One was in postmodern studies, if I recall correctly, the other one I think in epistemology. In one case, the paper had been written to deliberately mean nothing, in the other one, I seem to remember that the papers had been generated with Markov chains.&lt;p&gt;So, based on the same data, my personal conclusion is that some fields of Academia are vulnerable to bullshit, whether it&amp;#x27;s sophistry or simply using the right lingo. It is a pretty bad sign, and I suspect that it is correlated with fields in which results are hard to check&amp;#x2F;reproduce.&lt;p&gt;It may also be correlated with ideology (I remember that this was the accusation towards postmodern studies), which doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that it is correlated with &lt;i&gt;any specific ideology&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;In other words: promising research, but the starting hypothesis and its possible limitations need to be expressed more clearly, and much more data needed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spaniard89277</author><text>I studied Sociology in Spain. I&amp;#x27;d say that this problems are correlated with almost anything related with the school of Frankfurt &amp;#x2F; critical theorists. Not only do they have this problems, but professors affiliated with this school of thought were incredibly pervasive, manipulative and conspirative against other professors and students that didn&amp;#x27;t agree with them or had other worldviews.&lt;p&gt;I had feminist theory as subject. I remember one day we were talking about power dynamics in sex and all that Jazz. The professor said something along the lines that the state should teach people which sex positions were misogynist. She asked the students for opinions and I said that I wasn&amp;#x27;t cool with the state watching what people does in their bedroom. Exposed my arguments, and she was out of her mind, calling me a &amp;quot;neoliberal&amp;quot; in front of my peers, and even talking about me with other classes (other students told me).&lt;p&gt;That was the first time that I was aware of this behavior. Later I found that this group of people maneuvered to make life difficult to other professors, sabotaging their research etc etc.&lt;p&gt;Thankfully there was the other bunch of people that made it tolerable. Statistics I, II, III, Research Methodology I &amp;amp; II, Macroeconomics I &amp;amp; II, Anthropology (he was clearly a conservative) and some others I forgot.&lt;p&gt;Maybe all this transfers to publishing. Speaking with students from other faculties in Spain and other countries, I&amp;#x27;ve heard similar stories.&lt;p&gt;To this day I think studying sociology was a waste of my time. It was interesting, and having statistics and research background made me employable, but to be honest the atmosphere was barely tolerable.</text></comment>
<story><title>Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship</title><url>https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Yoric</author><text>While this article is interesting, it does start from a pretty strong assumption: that the problem is specific to one branch (or family of branches) of Academia.&lt;p&gt;I remember at least two similar scandals in very much non-social-justice-related branches of Academia. One was in postmodern studies, if I recall correctly, the other one I think in epistemology. In one case, the paper had been written to deliberately mean nothing, in the other one, I seem to remember that the papers had been generated with Markov chains.&lt;p&gt;So, based on the same data, my personal conclusion is that some fields of Academia are vulnerable to bullshit, whether it&amp;#x27;s sophistry or simply using the right lingo. It is a pretty bad sign, and I suspect that it is correlated with fields in which results are hard to check&amp;#x2F;reproduce.&lt;p&gt;It may also be correlated with ideology (I remember that this was the accusation towards postmodern studies), which doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that it is correlated with &lt;i&gt;any specific ideology&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;In other words: promising research, but the starting hypothesis and its possible limitations need to be expressed more clearly, and much more data needed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Sniffnoy</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re mistaken, largely in that you&amp;#x27;re construing the ideology being targeted too narrowly.  Note the bit at the beginning about &amp;quot;critical constructivism&amp;quot; -- this is certainly not only about Social Justice; that&amp;#x27;s just where it&amp;#x27;s the most obvious.&lt;p&gt;In short, this isn&amp;#x27;t just about certain fields being vulnerable to sophistry and bullshit.  This is about a number of fields or subfields which are dominated by (not merely vulnerable to) bullshit and sophistry &lt;i&gt;for a common reason&lt;/i&gt;, namely, that they have, for what could be called ideological reasons, abandoned the preconditions that make actual truth-seeking possible.  Social Justice and the postmodern studies are both part of this; they are related, contrary to what you claim.</text></comment>