Skeptic Review

In an ongoing debate, Jim, The Conservative Skeptic, has done a number of posts on Skepticism and I haven’t been able to keep up with his pace, because I always have to do a little homework before I feel like I can reply.

Today, I will start with “A Lack of Skepticism in Academia?”

If you have followed the most recent hoopla over the Grievance Studies Project conducted by Portland State University Assistant Professor Peter Boghossian, along with his co-authors James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, you know that this team advocates for a reintroduction of skepticism into academia, particularly in areas they call “Grievance Studies.” Grievance Studies refers to any “Something or Other Studies” that tends to focus on and inflame the grievances of certain identity groups, typically centered around race, gender or sexuality. Such studies might include Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, Feminist Studies, Queer Studies, and so on.

The authors were able to publish a total of seven scholarly research papers in peer-reviewed journals, with the exception of one, which was actually a poetry journal with laxer standards. The most famous of these papers was titled, “Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon.”

Each of the articles the team wrote deliberately contained absurd or satirical elements, but used language mimicking the scholarship in these fields as well as citing the most prominent thinkers in these areas.

The “hoax” or “audit” as you may prefer to call it, raised eyebrows about the rigorousness of what was passing for scholarship in these fields, especially when some studies are what are known as autoethnographies, which is a fancy word for research conducted from a personal perspective and then applied to broader cultural truths. These works, based on the lived experience of one individual, are then entered into the academic record and can be cited by other writers as sources.

Well, it is only natural that academics not in these fields may look askance at these types of works quietly wondering if these research papers should qualify as true scholarship. However, questioning these types of studies is likely to get you a verbal slap, as you may be accused of bigotry, misogyny, racism, white fragility, implicit bias… for simply asking is this true? Is this factual? Can we extrapolate truth from the experience of a single individual and apply it to the culture at large? Is it important to study dogs humping each other in a dog park and deriving conclusions about human rape?

And what about the academic journals? These were not predatory journals where the author pays to be published. These were legitimate academic journals within their fields. Why did the peer reviewers of these papers not detect a problem? Why did some praise the works as adding to the body of knowledge on this or that topic, like whether men should experiment with dildos to overcome homophobia?

So yes, academic skepticism is more important than ever as universities of today change and embrace some of these techniques within the Grievance Studies fields.

For more on this topic, you may find resources here:

At http://bit.ly/2OsWnnH, you may find a link to the project summary, all papers written (some did not achieve publication), professional reviews, and much more.

Filmmaker Mike Nayna has documented the project and his YouTube channel may be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzk08fzh5c_BhjQa1w35wtA

My own review of an actual (not a hoax) Gender Studies paper:

Hot Wings in Academia: YouTube Show about Eating Hot Wings “Creates, Maintains & Manipulates Inequitable Gender Hierarchies” & If You Disagree—Misogyny

My summary of one of the accepted Grievance Studies papers:

James Lindsay Channels a Feminist and Things Get Kind of Weird: An Academic Hoax

An anonymous open letter reacting to the Grievance Studies Project penned by disgruntled faculty and associates at Portland State:

https://psuvanguard.com/conceptual-penises-and-other-trolling/