Editing Bogdanov affair (section)

==Comparisons with the Sokal affair==

Several sources have referred to the Bogdanov affair as a "reverse Sokal" hoax, drawing a comparison with the [[Sokal affair]], where the physicist [[Alan Sokal]] published a deliberately fraudulent and indeed nonsensical article in the humanities journal ''[[Social Text]].'' Sokal's original aim had been to test the effects of the intellectual trend he called, "for want of a better term, [[postmodernism]]". Worried by what he considered a "more-or-less explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition of the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]]", Sokal decided to perform an experiment which he later cheerfully admitted was both unorthodox and uncontrolled, provoking a maelstrom of reactions which, to his surprise, received coverage in {{Lang|fr|[[Le Monde]]}} and even the front page of ''[[The New York Times]].''<ref>{{cite book
 | last1=Sokal
 | first1=Alan
 | author-link=Alan Sokal
 | last2=Bricmont
 | first2=Jean
 | author-link2=Jean Bricmont
 | title=Intellectual Impostures
 | year=2003
 | isbn=978-1-86197-631-4
 | publisher=Profile Books
 | location=London
 | edition=2nd
 | url=http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/#impostures }}</ref> The physicist John Baez compared the two events in his October 2002 post to the ''sci.physics.research'' [[newsgroup]].<ref name="usenet"/> Sociologist of science [[Harry Collins]] noted that all of the early reports of the incident made reference to the Sokal affair, and he speculated that without Sokal's precedent bringing the idea of hoax publications to mind, the Bogdanov papers would have sunk into the general obscurity of non-influential scientific writing.<ref>{{cite conference|last=Collins |first=Harry |author-link=Harry Collins |title=The Meaning of Hoaxes |book-title=Knowledge as Social Order |publisher=Routledge |year=2016 |pages=91–96 |url=http://orca.cf.ac.uk/78173/1/wrkgpaper-100.pdf}}</ref>

Igor and Grichka Bogdanov have and had vigorously insisted upon the validity of their work, while in contrast, Sokal was an outsider to the field in which he was publishing—a physicist, publishing in a humanities journal—and promptly issued a statement himself that his paper was a deliberate hoax. Replying on ''sci.physics.research'',<ref>{{cite newsgroup | title=Physics bitten by reverse Alan Sokal hoax? | author=Sokal, Alan | date=2002-10-31 | newsgroup=sci.physics.research |message-id=5b66478c.0210301401.84a7926@posting.google.com | url=https://groups.google.com/group/sci.physics.research/msg/a01affcdcc83e1e2 | access-date=2019-07-08}}</ref> Sokal referred readers to his follow-up essay,<ref>{{cite conference | last=Sokal | first=Alan | author-link=Alan Sokal | title=What the ''Social Text'' Affair Does and Does Not Prove | book-title=A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science | publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] | date=1998 | isbn=0-19-511725-5 | url=https://archive.org/details/housebuiltonsand00koer | access-date=2019-07-08 }}</ref> in which he notes "the mere fact of publication of my parody" only proved that the editors of one particular journal—and a "rather marginal" one at that—had applied a lax intellectual standard. (According to ''The New York Times'', Sokal was "almost disappointed" that the Bogdanovs had not attempted a hoax after his own style. "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander", he said.<ref name="johnson"/>) Baez, who made a comparison between the two affairs, later retracted, saying that the brothers "have lost too much face for [withdrawing the work as a hoax] to be a plausible course of action".<ref name = "Baez web"/>

In a letter to ''The New York Times'', [[Cornell University|Cornell]] physics professor [[Paul Ginsparg]] wrote that the contrast between the cases was plainly evident: "here, the authors were evidently aiming to be credentialed by the intellectual prestige of the discipline rather than trying to puncture any intellectual pretension." He added that the fact some journals and scientific institutions have low or variable standards is "hardly a revelation".<ref name="ginsparg">{{cite news|last=Ginsparg |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Ginsparg |title='Is It Art?' Is Not a Question for Physics |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=2002-11-12 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/12/opinion/l-is-it-art-is-not-a-question-for-physics-869198.html |page=A26 |access-date=2019-07-08}}</ref> The observation was later confirmed by studies showing that high-prestige journals struggle to reach average reliability.<ref name="Brembs2018">{{cite journal |vauthors=Brembs B |title=Prestigious Science Journals Struggle to Reach Even Average Reliability |journal=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |volume=12 |page=37 |year=2018 |pmid=29515380 |pmc=5826185 |doi=10.3389/fnhum.2018.00037 |doi-access=free}}</ref>