Re: [Marxism] more on the "automatic" generation of scientific papers

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Les Schaffer" <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> as this article points us, there are important reasons for examining the
> practice of digital enhancements of medical images, apart from a crude
> materialism which suggests that doctoring is commensurate with a hunger for
> funding. but if we are going to expose the frailities of the ivory tower,
> we should have an holistic view of the disparate problems involved. i guess
> i am rethinking my love for Sokal's hoax.

Very interesting commentary, and indeed I think you have hit on a previously
undiscussed problematic aspect of Sokal-like hoaxes, and describe those
problems quite simply. Yet I don't think Sokal's hoax in particular, nor
that type of hoax in general, can be viewed as less valid for lacking a
holistic approach, simply because they never claim to be holistic.

In scientific terms, they are experiments in social manipulation. Like all
experiments, they are but a part of the scientific process, which requires
the development of hypotheses, the repetition of the experiment to verify
results, discussion and peer reviews etc etc etc. Just like an chemistry
expriment without context is useless, Sokal-type hoaxes without context are
also useless.

As with the discussion on Godel vis a vis Marxism, I think it is up to
marxist academia to defend or attack the positive and negative *use* of the
results of the experiment, not the experiment or the hypothesis itself.
(e.g. Nuclear physics remains a major human achivement, even if it still
locks within the possibility of our obliteration.)

In the specific case of the latest MIT hoax, the racist attack upon
organizers, and other such peripheral B.S. shouldn't render the results of
the experiment invalid, but rather require a dissenting voice to that
racism.

To use a non-scientific analogy, but one any marxist can understand, the
hoaxes are the rifles, but it is people who pull the trigger. Some of them
would be reactionary, and it is up to us that at least some, but hopefully a
majority, would be progressives.

sks


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