Wednesday is April Fools’ Day. So as you’re stuffing snakes into peanut brittle cans, inflating whoopee cushions or winding your joy buzzer in preparation, CSPO types might take a moment to consider the legacy of the most “science and society-ish” practical joke ever: NYU physicist Alan Sokal’s 1996 hoax article in the journal Social Text.
Ostentatiously titled "Transgressing the Boundaries – Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," Sokal’s article was intended to lampoon cultural critiques of science by philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Bruno Latour. Lacing plausible-sounding physics-speak with intentionally nonsensical political analysis, Sokal managed to sneak the article by the journal’s editors without, apparently, being subject to much scrutiny. Here’s a typical passage:
For, as Bohr noted, “a complete elucidation of one and the same object may require diverse points of view which defy a unique description” – this is quite simply a fact about the world, much as the self-proclaimed empiricists of modernist science might prefer to deny it. In such a situation, how can a self-perpetuating secular priesthood of credentialed “scientists” purport to maintain a monopoly on the production of scientific knowledge?
In its defense, Social Text was neither peer-reviewed nor solely
dedicated to philosophy of science. The editors claimed that they knew something
was off about the article but published it as a gesture of good faith to
a well-known and apparently sincere, if slightly misguided, physicist. By
most accounts, the hoax served singularly to pull the little journal out
of obscurity while simultaneously discrediting it.
Still, when Sokal revealed his prank in the May 1996 issue of Lingua Franca it caused an uproar in the academic community. Some praised it as an important gesture in defense of scientific integrity. Others saw it as something of an academic cheap shot. Many just thought it was funny. The affair has come to be known as one of the more famous battles in the “science wars” of the 1990s where scholars argued over the proper way to think about science in social context.
For a more contemporary example in the same spirit, check out this clip from Harry Shearer’s Le Show: http://media.harryshearer.com/?ProgramID=670. While spoofing NPR program “The Bryant Park Project (RIP),” the man behind Ned Flanders also takes a jab at the idea of democracy in science. “We feel that the scientific conversation is being monopolized by the people who have advanced degrees,” says Quentin Charlatang, the ominously-voiced director of the fictional People’s Science Initiative. He continues, “We know how wrong the so-called experts have been about our primary elections this year, why should we trust them when it comes to the age of the universe?”
As any fan of The Daily Show or The Onion will tell you, good satire can make the sort of poignant political commentary that’s hard to find in more formal discourse. On the other hand, there are few things more irritating than a joke taken too seriously. One wonders whether the logic of Sokal’s prank in particular has embedded itself in the political consciousness a bit too deeply. Though the science wars largely have died down, the hoax’s legacy persists in many current debates about science’s role in society. The position implied by Sokal and others, that science ought to be more or less exempt from political and social scrutiny, is still popular and driving many policy decisions around the world.
In his inaugural address, President Obama spoke of the need to “restore
science to its rightful place.” Last week, Nancy Pelosi described the agenda
for the current Congress as “...four
words: science, science, science, science.” Not to discount the incredible
importance of scientific and technological innovation, but what exactly
is this “rightful place” in relation to our goals as a society and how do
we make sure that science justifies its right to be there?
Ideally, science should be a framework that facilitates and shapes the
way in which we communicate and evaluate ideas in the public space and,
simultaneously, be a tool for bringing about certain desirable ends. Science
has spilled out of the laboratory and is now thoroughly wrapped up in messy
socio-political problems such as global warming, emerging diseases, and
genetic engineering – issues that pose the question of how we want things
to be along side the question of how things are. Social and cultural critiques
have a role to play in the same arena as science, and the roles of the two
do occasionally overlap. If we allow sectarian views of science to distract
us into thinking of science as separate and untouchable by the socio-political
sphere, however, the real joke may well turn out to be on us.
[About the author: Owen Marshall is a political science senior at ASU and a CSPO research intern.]
