Conceptual penis as social construct: hoax paper easily passes peer review and is published

[Axulus]

The androcentric scientific and meta-scientific evidence that the penis is the male reproductive organ is considered overwhelming and largely uncontroversial.

That’s how we began. We used this preposterous sentence to open a “paper” consisting of 3,000 words of utter nonsense posing as academic scholarship. Then a peer-reviewed academic journal in the social sciences accepted and published it.

This paper should never have been published. Titled, “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct,” our paper “argues” that “The penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct. We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a gender-performative, highly fluid social construct.” As if to prove philosopher David Hume’s claim that there is a deep gap between what is and what ought to be, our should-never-have-been-published paper was published in the open-access (meaning that articles are freely accessible and not behind a paywall), peer-reviewed journal Cogent Social Sciences. (In case the PDF is removed, we’ve archived it.)

Assuming the pen names “Jamie Lindsay” and “Peter Boyle,” and writing for the fictitious “Southeast Independent Social Research Group,” we wrote an absurd paper loosely composed in the style of post-structuralist discursive gender theory. The paper was ridiculous by intention, essentially arguing that penises shouldn’t be thought of as male genital organs but as damaging social constructions. We made no attempt to find out what “post-structuralist discursive gender theory” actually means. We assumed that if we were merely clear in our moral implications that maleness is intrinsically bad and that the penis is somehow at the root of it, we could get the paper published in a respectable journal.

http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room...-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/

I can't say I'm surprised. So much of what passes for social "science" these days is just mumbo jumbo bullshit.

 

[repoman]

This paper is now a hate crime in Canada.

/s for all you dummies here.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

That's pretty funny.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Cogent Social Sciences is a multidisciplinary open access journal offering high quality peer review across the social sciences

Real rigor!

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Someone didn't do their job.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

What job?

Jokingly I have signed up s a peer reviewer on an open access journal. But I thin the article goes on to stress the problem with open access journals.

One of the biggest questions facing peer-reviewed publishing is, “Are pay-to-publish, open-access journals the future of academic publishing?” We seem to have answered that question with a large red, “No!”

There is, however, an asterisk on that “No!” That is, the peer-review process in pay-to-publish, open-access journals cannot achieve quality assurance without extremely stringent safeguards (which will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the debate). There’s nothing necessarily or intrinsically wrong with either open-access or pay-to-publish journals, and they may ultimately prove valuable. However, in the short term, pay-to-publish may be a significant problem because of the inherent tendencies toward conflicts of interest (profits trump academic quality, that is, the profit motive is dangerous because ethics are expensive).

 

[Bronzeage]

We get threads of this sort on TFT all the time, but the the thread author is earnest and sincere.

 

[untermensche]

Peer review means they believe normal statistical methods were used and the data is not likely fraudulent.

It is not a comment on conclusions.

That is left up to "experts" in the fields.

 

[J842P]

Peer review means they believe normal statistical methods were used and the data is not likely fraudulent.

It is not a comment on conclusions.

That is left up to "experts" in the fields.

That's not what it means, in the quantitative sciences, let alone in the these areas of "sociology" which are not even social sciences but *bad philosophy.* "Normal statistical methods" are irrelevant. Even in the natural sciences, when a paper is submitted for review it is given to relevant experts to review and the process involves more than a mere check for the soundness of your statistical methods.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Peer review means they believe normal statistical methods were used and the data is not likely fraudulent.

It is not a comment on conclusions.

That is left up to "experts" in the fields.

That's not what it means, in the quantitative sciences, let alone in the these areas of "sociology" which are not even social sciences but *bad philosophy.* "Normal statistical methods" are irrelevant. Even in the natural sciences, when a paper is submitted for review it is given to relevant experts to review and the process involves more than a mere check for the soundness of your statistical methods.

Yeah, there's an editor involved who will check the whole thing. The editor(s) also happen to have some expertise in the science, at least in the same general field. If you look at the site, they talk about their peer-review process which is why I wrote earlier someone did not do their job and Nice Squirrel commented on that.

 

[barbos]

Peer review means they believe normal statistical methods were used and the data is not likely fraudulent.

It is not a comment on conclusions.

That is left up to "experts" in the fields.

That's not what it means, in the quantitative sciences, let alone in the these areas of "sociology" which are not even social sciences but *bad philosophy.* "Normal statistical methods" are irrelevant. Even in the natural sciences, when a paper is submitted for review it is given to relevant experts to review and the process involves more than a mere check for the soundness of your statistical methods.

Well, but how do you explain explosion of garbage publications in recent decades?

 

[fromderinside]

That's not what it means, in the quantitative sciences, let alone in the these areas of "sociology" which are not even social sciences but *bad philosophy.* "Normal statistical methods" are irrelevant. Even in the natural sciences, when a paper is submitted for review it is given to relevant experts to review and the process involves more than a mere check for the soundness of your statistical methods.

Well, but how do you explain explosion of garbage publications in recent decades?

Just like I explain garbage ( in current vernacular, Fake News) reporting has exploded. I wonder how that happened?

My take is you take a bunch of people who want to make an impact who have little training or ethics and you're gonna get and explosion of GIGO.

 

[barbos]

Well, but how do you explain explosion of garbage publications in recent decades?

Just like I explain garbage ( in current vernacular, Fake News) reporting has exploded. I wonder how that happened?

My take is you take a bunch of people who want to make an impact who have little training or ethics and you're gonna get and explosion of GIGO.

You should publish that

 

[blastula]

I like Lindsay from what I've heard from him, Boghossian not as much, but this is disappointing.

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.

They're being very disingenuous. They got rejected by a nobody journal which gave them an autoresponse referral to a pay-to-publish journal, which then accepted it. This doesn't prove what they want it to prove. Not to say that junk does not get published in influential journals within that field, but this doesn't show it does. They should have submitted it to one or more better journals. Ironically, their writeup in Skeptic comes off like a symptom of the actual problem of the replication crisis, as it looks like they decided to write it up as a positive result whatever the findings were.

Why the "Conceptual Penis" Hoax is Just a Big Cock Up. - Bleeding Heart Libertarians

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I like Lindsay from what I've heard from him, Boghossian not as much, but this is disappointing.

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.

They're being very disingenuous. They got rejected by a nobody journal which gave them an autoresponse referral to a pay-to-publish journal, which then accepted it. This doesn't prove what they want it to prove. Not to say that junk does not get published in influential journals within that field, but this doesn't show it does. They should have submitted it to one or more better journals. Ironically, their writeup in Skeptic comes off like a symptom of the actual problem of the replication crisis, as it looks like they decided to write it up as a positive result whatever the findings were.

Why the "Conceptual Penis" Hoax is Just a Big Cock Up. - Bleeding Heart Libertarians

Yeah, they should have done due diligence in submitting to many journals of different types...definitely high quality (or a chance to be proven wrong).

 

[untermensche]

Peer review means they believe normal statistical methods were used and the data is not likely fraudulent.

It is not a comment on conclusions.

That is left up to "experts" in the fields.

That's not what it means, in the quantitative sciences, let alone in the these areas of "sociology" which are not even social sciences but *bad philosophy.* "Normal statistical methods" are irrelevant. Even in the natural sciences, when a paper is submitted for review it is given to relevant experts to review and the process involves more than a mere check for the soundness of your statistical methods.

You're living in a dream world.

I'm describing the real one.

Publications have a lot of space to fill.

If they were as choosy as you claim they would not fill much of it.

 

[bilby]

You're living in a dream world.

I'm describing the real one.

You could save a huge amount of both your time and ours by simply assuming that we all take this response from you as read.

You basically say this about absolutely everything - and nobody agrees with it, ever, in the absence of some useful commentary. And, of course, in the presence of such commentary, it would be redundant.

Or you could wear a T-Shirt that reads 'World's Biggest Ego', to achieve the same effect. Perhaps the POTUS has one you could borrow.

 

[untermensche]

You're living in a dream world.

I'm describing the real one.

You could save a huge amount of both your time and ours by simply assuming that we all take this response from you as read.

You basically say this about absolutely everything - and nobody agrees with it, ever, in the absence of some useful commentary. And, of course, in the presence of such commentary, it would be redundant.

Or you could wear a T-Shirt that reads 'World's Biggest Ego', to achieve the same effect. Perhaps the POTUS has one you could borrow.

Why are you talking about me?

Address the ideas. If you can.

I don't give two shits what you think of me.

 

[bilby]

You could save a huge amount of both your time and ours by simply assuming that we all take this response from you as read.

You basically say this about absolutely everything - and nobody agrees with it, ever, in the absence of some useful commentary. And, of course, in the presence of such commentary, it would be redundant.

Or you could wear a T-Shirt that reads 'World's Biggest Ego', to achieve the same effect. Perhaps the POTUS has one you could borrow.

Why are you talking about me?

What, are you thick or something? YES obviously I am talking about you. That's why I quoted you. Who else would I be talking about??

Address the ideas. If you can.

I don't give two shits what you think of me.

That's good. Because if you did, you could be in a very bad place right now.

Express some ideas, if you can; Then I shall address them.

"Everyone else is wrong and stupid" isn't actually an idea. You need to start saying something else, if you want to have a discussion.

 

[untermensche]

Why are you talking about me?

What, are you thick or something? YES obviously I am talking about you. That's why I quoted you. Who else would I be talking about??

Address the ideas. If you can.

I don't give two shits what you think of me.

That's good. Because if you did, you could be in a very bad place right now.

Express some ideas, if you can; Then I shall address them.

"Everyone else is wrong and stupid" isn't actually an idea. You need to start saying something else, if you want to have a discussion.

You are a bore. A bothersome gnat.

Published research is a mixed bag.

Some of it is extremely good. But most of the good research appears in a small number of journals.

There is a lot of research that is structurally sound but the conclusions are far from sound out there.

To deny it is just to be an ignorant child.