Science / Quadrant Hoax – And You Thought Only James Frey And JT LeRoy Did This…

Dear Quadrant,

I think I’ll attempt a pseudoscience article: kind of the Sokal hoax in reverse. Don’t get me wrong: I liked the Sokal prank as much as Windschuttle did. Showing up hogwash from any ideological stand is a valuable exercise. But I think Australia needs the opposite experiment.

From ‘Diary of a Hoax’, hosted on Crikey.com

Quick Update – investigative powers have unveiled who the hoaxer was: head to the blog of Skeptic Lawyer for the best run down of all the relevant links and updates as they appear.

This news was sent by a friend – imagine claiming nasty stuff about Australia’s CSIRO, the Australian Government’s organisation for science and research in a popular publication – and then announcing you’re an anon hoaxer?

From Crikey.com:

“Gould’s” article uses a mélange of fact, misconstrued science and fiction masquerading as science to argue that science research, such as that behind genetically modified foods, should be above scrutiny by the media and the public. It criticizes the Rudd Government for “shameless populism” for inviting “ordinary” Australians to be part of the 2020 Summit. The article says:

What has become unspeakable is that journalists and their publics, like small children reaching for the medicine cabinet, do not always understand what is best.

In a ruse designed to lampoon Windschuttle’s historical research, which began by checking the footnotes of leading historians, the article contains some false references.

This news report isn’t that sympathetic about how CSIRO were treated by the original report – The Sydney Morning Herald:

“The CSIRO got to the brink of commercialising a cancer fighting strain of wheat engineered with human genes, according with a hoax article, before backing off for fear and moral outrage from the public and the media…

If it had been true, it would have represented an extraordinary capitulation by Australia’s leading research organisation to opposition that had not been expressed but only anticipated.

But a spokesman for the CSIRO yesterday dismissed all claims made in the hoax Quadrant article in relation to the organisation, saying they were completely false.”

Do check out the whole article by the SMH – they have a particular ’spin’ on it that makes it seem like ‘ooh, but the nasty, nasty scientists could do some of these things!!’. What a load of hyped-up rot to promote fear of science.

What did ‘anon’ say about themselves? Thanks to crikey.com’s investigations – there’s Diary of A Hoax, as I cited at the start. You may note that the anon compares themselves with Sokal’s hoax – but he was open from the start about his hoax. In addition, “Sokal was highlighting not so much the fact that editors don’t check their sources, but rather that specifically post-modernist paradigms are full of meaningless language which only faintly resembles science in appearance”, said my friend. Have to agree with them there!

I must say, it’s a pity that Biotechnology Australia closed down – they would have had a field day with this one! Their group was all about promoting accurate scientific facts about biotechnology and educating people about what was possible and what ethical guidelines do exist.

For full article and responses from Crikey and Quadrant see the following links:

Quadrant article: ‘Scare Campaigns and Science Reporting’

Crikey.com’s response: ‘How Quadrant Swallowed a Giant Hoax‘

Quadrant response: ‘Margaret Simons and an Apparent Hoax On Quadrant‘

Tagged as: Alan Sokal hoax, Australia, Biotechnology, bogus claim, Crikey.com, CSIRO, diary of a hoax, GM crops, hoax, Media, news, postmodernism, Quadrant, Quadrant hoax, Science, science reporting, Sharon Gould, Sokal