I don’t think so, Christopher

For pity’s sake, Quadrant fell for my ham-fisted ruse! At least with the Sokal hoax, Alan Sokal was a bona fide physics professor. So it’s understandable that a journal editor might unquestioningly publish his nonsense. But so neatly did my essay conform with reactionary ideology that Quadrant, it seems, didn’t even check the putative author’s credentials. Nor it seems did they get the piece peer-reviewed. Nor did they check the “facts”; nor the footnotes. Nor were they alerted by the clues.

The symbols were evident…

But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others.

Still, now my experiment has worked, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Do I feel schadenfreude? Not really. I feel ambivalent. I’m almost embarrassed for you, Windschuttle. Just look at you above, a pea in a pod alongside those other culture warriors.

Now I find that once more I have shrunk
To an interloper, robber of dead men’s dream

In the email you sent me (or rather Sharon) this morning, you wrote: “Many of our readers would be aware of the Sokal hoax and its implications, and I think your introduction would lull them into thinking the whole article is another analysis of the follies of constructivism, whereas it is really much more interesting than that.” You suggested the first 12 pars about culture studies and journalism education be cut. Which I’ll happily do, even though I so like the way I fashioned them, and I do like how they parody the things you write about journalism and constructivist critiques of science. But no matter; you then write:

I really like the article. You bring together some very important considerations about scientific method, the media, politics and morality that I know our readers would find illuminating… if you could re-work the intro along these lines, we would be very pleased to publish the article in our January edition. I would need to hear back from you as early as possible next week.

Best regards,

Keith

Keith Windschuttle
Editor, Quadrant
PO Box 477
Paddington NSW 2021 Australia
Phone: 61 2 9818 1155
Mobile 0419 219 314
www.quadrant.org.au
www.sydneyline.com

I almost feel like apologising, because, as hokey as it sounds, as much as I love a good piece of culture-jamming, I also hold Lauren Slater‘s position on “the critical role of kindness in writing and in life”. I didn’t do this to be unkind to you personally. This experiment wasn’t designed with ill-intent, but to uncover hypocrisy in knowledge-claims, and also spark public debate about standards of truth when anything is claimed in the name of ‘science’. You failed my test spectacularly, Windschuttle. You Closed [your] inanimate lids to find it real. You have been hoisted by your own petard.

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