索卡事件 The Sokal Affair

索卡时间是阿兰·索卡(Alan Sokal,物理学家)通过后现代文化研究杂志《社会文本》(杜克大学(Duke University)出版)设计的骗局。1996年,他向杂志社投了篇用术语伪装的荒唐文章,想看看杂志社是否“会发表这么一篇充满荒唐思想的文章,如果这篇文章听上去不错,并且迎合编辑们意识形态的预想”。

文章《跨越界线:通往量子力学重力理论的转换诠释学》(Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity)那一年被刊登在“科学战争”里。 文章发表当天,索卡在另一篇论文里宣布,这篇文章是个骗局。他说《社会文本》是“左翼暗语的拼凑、阿谀奉承的参考、浮夸堂皇的引用、完全直白的胡扯”。随之而来的是激烈的辩论,特别是有关学院伦理学的。

最近的一个相似例子,是2005年的鲁特报(Rooter Paper)。这是一份电脑随机产生的报纸,随后会发至科学会议并结果被确认为合法。

The Sokal affair was a hoax by Alan Sokal (a physicist) perpetrated on the postmodern cultural studies journal Social Text (published by Duke University). In 1996, he submitted a paper of nonsense camouflaged in jargon to see if the journal would “publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”

The paper, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”, was published in “Science Wars” that year. On the day of publication, Sokal announced (in a different paper,) that the article was a hoax. He said that Social Text was “a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense”. Much heated debate followed, especially regarding academic ethics.

Another recent example of this same situation is the 2005 Rooter Paper; this was a paper randomly generated by a computer which was submitted - and consequently approved as legitimate - to a scientific conference.