Unfalsifiable theories and no dissenting ideas allowed

A kind of social snakeoil is being pushed upon us….

a culture has developed that make only some conclusions allowed.

Three left wing academics wanted to expose the political corruption in feminist, sexuality, queer, gender, race and fat studies. They hoped to bring back some rigor and reintroduce skepticism to peer review. They submitted 20 outrageously fake papers (like a feminist rewrite of Mein Kampf), got seven accepted so far, but outed themselves. They found they could get ridiculous things published  as long as they framed the idea in politically fashionable terminology.

Project Summary: ○ This problem has arisen within a culture in which dissenting ideas have not been admitted or tolerated, often resulting in legitimate criticisms being denigrated on moral grounds. For example, questioning tenets of feminist philosophy might get you branded sexist or accused of carrying internalized misogyny. Questioning critical race scholarship is written off as exhibiting “white fragility” (Robin DiAngelo, 2011, 2018), “white ignore-ance” (Barbara Applebaum, 2006), a form of intentional ignorance, a form of resistance, or seeking white approval. Of note, it is impossible to counter such claims, and attempts to do so are taken as proof of guilt.

 Grievance studies does not continue the work of the civil rights movement, it corrupts it…

Their fake study into rape culture of dog parks, was honored as a leading scholarship. Though “The reviewers were worried we did not respect the dogs privacy.”

Fake academic scandal:Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf words used in embarrassing journal hoax

The trio went public with the project after The Wall Street Journal uncovered it, saying a paper which claimed dog parks are “petri dishes for canine ‘rape culture’” was ridiculous enough to pique the publication’s interest.

We intentionally made the papers absurd and used faulty methods to see if they could pass scrutiny at the highest level of academia. Concerningly, they did,” James Lindsay, one of the authors of the papers, said.

“A rambling poetic monologue of a bitter, divorced feminist written by a teenage-angst poetry generator shouldn’t be accepted as a scholarly article worthy of publishing.”

In US humanities departments an academic with seven papers published within seven years is awarded tenure, an indefinite academic appointment. The trio completed these seven papers within 10 months.

Boghossian, a professor at Portland State University, said he had been targeted professionally for questioning several of the fields in the past and expected to be fired or disciplined for his role in the papers, but denied he was motivated by a personal grudge.

Videos: Part 1 (James Damore at Google):   Part 2 (this video above).

Professors could today fall from grace,
Causing snowflakes to run for safe space,
If they dared to break free,
From groupthink P.C.,
On climate-change, gender or race.

–Ruairi

Details of two papers from the full papers and project fact sheet

Published: The Feminist rewrite of Mein Kampf

“Feminist Mein Kampf” Our Struggle is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism Accepted by Adolf Hitler:

Journal of Women and Social Work, leading feminist social work journal

Note: The last two thirds of this paper is based upon a rewriting of roughly 3600 words of Chapter 12 of Volume 1 of Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler, though it diverges significantly from the original. This chapter is the one in which Hitler lays out in a multi-point plan which we partially reproduced why the Nazi Party is needed and what it requires of its members. The first one third of the paper is our own theoretical framing to make this attempt possible.

Summary: Feminism which foregrounds individual choice, responsibility, female agency, and strength can be countered by a feminism which unifies in solidarity around the victimhood of the most marginalized women in society.

Purpose: That we could find Theory to make anything (in this case, part of Chapter 12 of Volume 1 of Mein Kampf with buzzwords switched in) acceptable to journals if we put it in terms of politically fashionable arguments and existing scholarship. Of note, while the original language and intent of Mein Kampf has been significantly changed to make this paper publishable and about feminism, the reliance upon the politics of grievance remains clear, helping to justify our use of the term “grievance studies” for these fields

Published: Rape culture in a dog park

Published: Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity in Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon
Published in and recognized as exemplary scholarship by Gender, Place, and Culture, the leading
feminist geography journal and a top-10 gender studies journal.

Summary: That dog parks are “rape-condoning spaces” and a place of rampant canine rape culture and systemic oppression against “the oppressed dog” through which human attitudes to both problems can be measured and analyzed by applying black feminist criminology. This is done to provide insights into training men out of the sexual violence and bigotry to which they are prone. Arguably our most absurd paper

Purpose: Journals will accept arguments which should be clearly ludicrous and unethical if they provide (an unfalsifiable) way to perpetuate notions of toxic masculinity, heteronormativity, and implicit bias.

Honored as leading scholarship by journal: May 7, 2018

h/t Waxing Gibberish