SIO45: James Lindsay, Co-Author of the 'Conceptual Penis' Hoax Paper

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 45. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. I'm very excited to bring you today an interview with James Lindsay to get the other side, I suppose, his side of the whole gender studies hoax paper. And there's no point in giving you much introduction. I think we should just get into it, save the analysis for afterwards. So here we go, me Joining me now is James Lindsay, back for third, fourth, second, third time? That's something like third, but we've talked about your past books and most recently, Life is a brilliant book that I highly recommended and I still would recommend. So how are you doing, James?

0:01:17 James: I'm a bit tired, but I'm good, thank you. A little embattled.

0:01:21 Thomas: Understandably so. Where do we begin? I mean, we scheduled originally, I hadn't made up my mind about the whole thing. And I don't know if you have noticed in the flurry of media requests and everything you're going through right now that I firmly made up my mind, but I'm always open to change my mind no matter what. But I have to say, it's a weird position because I just can't believe you guys

0:01:56 James: Let me start with what you actually just said, and then we can get into a little bit of the story. So, what you just said is, you know, you didn't know how to proceed, and you've firmly made up your mind, and thankfully you said you're open to revising your belief, so, excellent. So the idea that people have firmly made up their mind is the most astounding part of this so far for us. So we published a piece in Skeptic, revealing that we had written this hoax paper, revealing some of our motivations, some of our conclusions from that, and it stated clearly that we see at least a two-pronged and maybe a three-prunged problem, although the third prong directly accuses somebody of academic misconduct that we're not capable of. I don't feel we have grounds to make such a bold accusation against a publisher.

0:02:44 James: And so, and we can talk about those three components in a moment. The third one would be the fact that if the journal that transferred our paper. So let me give the quick story in just a second. So we'll come back to this. We'll talk about the three parts. The responses, though, have been nearly a perfect ideological litmus test. Rather than admitting, so we pointed our finger to two or three potential problems and openly said, we don't know how to tell which of these is dominant. It. And we will get into that later. And I firmly believe this.

0:03:14 Thomas: Well, we can get into that later. I feel like you

0:03:21 James: I don't know.

0:03:21 Thomas: Were a little less ambiguous than that. And note, and note Michael Shermer's, note uh, that it's, that there's, oh, well, I

0:03:26 James: Well, I don'T speak for Michael Shermer. So he can put what he wants on his website. I speak for my own opinions. I won't even speak for Peter's. So at

0:03:35 Thomas: Understand, I'm not trying to get you to speak for anybody else.

0:03:38 James: This point, I have no clear way to determine. And in fact, my view oscillates from to time about which of the two primary problems that aren't really accusatory, like I said, we'll come back to that, are the ultimate problem. And yet the responses that we're getting are it's 100% that the journal is a sham, or it's100% that gender studies is crap, or its100% the academic studies are crap, period, or 100% this, it's 100%that. And it's nearly a perfect litmus test of people who have already made up their minds. And I'm sitting here having completely lost control of the narrative.

I actually have no know, interest in regaining control of the narrative. I just want to tell my part of the story and the narrative I'm watching, you know, I'm launching multiple narratives develop. And the entire time, my entire thought of the, of this whole thing has been, I don't know how to pick between these. So I really wonder how people are choosing between them. If I have no idea how to choose between them and I don'T, I DON'T actually care which one of the problems is the the problem. If there is a problem,

0:04:22 Thomas: Okay.

0:04:40 Thomas: I can tell you if you want how I chose between them. Really? Why

0:04:49 James: I'm actually happy

0:04:49 Thomas: Do you not, why do you say you don't care?

0:04:50 James: To, Which one of the problems is a problem? Because I just want whatever problems are out there to be identified to the maximum extent that they need to be identified and cleared up. So if the problem is partially to do with gender studies, I would like for their field to do a systematic internal house cleaning and clean up the issue. If the problem has purely or largely to do open access publishing having a conflict of of interest, I would like to see that problem cleared up. If there's actual academic misconduct going on on the part of a publisher, that problem surely needs to be cleared up, whichever problems there are, all of those to whatever degree they're relevant need to be cleaned up. And so now that we've generated this huge controversy, there's a lot of attention being drawn to this. And so the sad part is the number of people who are refusing to see the possibility that there's more more than one problem going on.

0:05:40 James: And therefore, the shutting down of a potentially productive dialogue that could deal with more than 1 thing at once. I see no matter which problem gets ultimately faulted for this, whichever problem it is, the more that that problem gets fixed. Because there has to be some problem. Whatever problem gets mixed, that's a benefit to academia. That's a benefit to people. That ultimately what our goal had to become once an open access journal asked for the paper, sure.

0:06:09 Thomas: Yeah, but then I'm not going to make you speak for, you know, Michael Shermer, but you signed your name to the skeptic article. So are you at least standing by the skeptic article? Because your language was not ambiguous. Your language, here's a quote, part of the fault may fall on the open access pay to publish model, but the rest falls on the entire academic enterprise collectively referred to as gender studies. As we see it, gender studies In its current form needs to do some serious housecleaning. I really feel like you've walked that back a little bit. Now, I know you're still sticking to, well, some part of the problem is gender studies, but the article you published in Skeptic Magazine did not Put it in the delicate way that I think you're trying to put it now. And certainly not, I know you can always say you're not responsible for anyone else, but you are responsible for this article and people took this article like Sam Harris, like Richard Dawkins, to say unambiguously gender studies is the problem.

0:06:15 James: So... Well...

0:07:03 James: Gender studies has a problem and I I will 100 back that. Is the problem is more than we can say.

0:07:09 Thomas: Okay, well I believe that your paper says nothing about gender studies. It says absolutely nothing about it. So...

0:07:16 James: Would say that the paper itself maybe or maybe doesn't say anything, but there are other pieces of evidence with which its publication is consistent that suggest that that internal review of the field of gender studies may be long overdue, and we can talk about those.

0:07:35 Thomas: Yeah but okay so I'm Sure, no doubt, by now you've seen all the same stuff I've seen, I'm guessing, but you know the the "Get Me Off Your Fucking Email List" paper, yes.

0:07:43 James: I know about that, yes.

0:07:45 Thomas: They got nearly the identical review notes to your paper, they got they were told Oh, bone up a couple of sources and change some formatting here, but otherwise excellent and consistent with our journal. That paper literally just said "get me off your fucking email list" on repeat, that sentence over and over and over.

0:07:48 James: Okay, so in that case, okay, so that journal clearly has terrible internal review problems, and hopefully, rather

0:08:08 Thomas: That journal had an actual impact score. It was way higher up in prestige than, oh, I need to ask you that. Speaking of, I'll finish that sentence, but that journal had an actual impact score and the journal you guys published in has a zero, no, has no impact score, not even scored. The journal that you guys got turned down by has zero impact score. So, can I ask you, how did you find that first journal? How did you even get in contact with them? They're not, they're not in a lit, like, I looked at the rankings of journals by influence, they're not in the top 115 gender studies journals. So when, I guess, if I were you, and and Pete, and I'm sitting there thinking we need to, we want to show, because you don't deny that your goal was to show that gender studies is bunk, right? I mean, you went into it with that, I think, in the article you say

0:08:53 James: Than is bunk, has a problem, a major postmodern and political problem, yes?

0:08:53 Thomas: Okay has it, has a major problem, needs a needs house clean Okay, you went into it with that goal, so why on earth, I gotta ask you, did you try the top journals and they didn't, and they turned you down? How did you get to this journal?

0:09:08 James: Well, we wanted to pick one that was in alignment with the theme of the paper, which clearly has to do with masculinity studies. And so what I actually did to choose this journal, the first thing I tried to do was I went and looked through the list on Real Peer Review. And the first one that I saw on the day that I submitted it, that said something about masculinity studies, I said, well, this is a target. Let's see what happens. So it was because a similar paper, that I don't remember what it was, and I wish I did, I would tell you, I don't know what it is, I can't remember, but I saw a similar paper, and then I saw Norma, International Journal for Masculinity Studies, I was like, that's pretty good, okay, let's try there. And so I sent it to them. I didn't actually, I will tell you the truth, and um, the statement can be made as public as it, as it needs to be, Peter believed our paper would get picked up, and I never did, so I send it to this journal thinking, okay, let's see what happens.

0:10:06 James: I fully expected it to be rejected, just rejected outright. Probably, I expected to get a reply that said, what are you doing? This is a hoax. And instead, I got a reply this said, we think this, this would be a good fit for this other journal, cogent social sciences, and we will internally transfer it for you. So I started looking.

0:10:14 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:10:27 Thomas: Let's talk about that reply.

0:10:29 James: Okay, I

0:10:30 Thomas: Do you, because it's my belief with a pretty high confidence that that was an auto-generated, kind of automated reply. Somebody probably looked over your paper and clicked, this is crap, let's send this automated reply, which is totally unspecific, the amount that you published, unless you have more that you didn't publish, but in the article, completely unspecific. It's just bullet points and it advertises that the benefit is, oh, it's no, don't, saves you time because you just transfer over, so it seems to me like this is pretty clearly what's

0:10:47 James: Don't. There was more to the email, let me, let me clarify that There was a little bit more to the email, but there were no reviewer notes, there was no explanation of why they were shuttling it to another journal or saying no for this journal, and then the cursory note at the end, we hope this doesn't dissuade you from publishing with us again, and So, but

0:11:00 Thomas: That Okay. Yeah. Right.

0:11:14 Thomas: So? That's a, that's a, that's a generic reply, would you say?

0:11:18 James: Yes. Okay, so now let's talk about the third problem, the one that I, for the record, have absolutely, absolutely no grounds to make and not making, will not make. And even if I had a lawyer behind me right now, I would still be hesitant to make if he was saying I could do it. And that argument is if it is internally known that Cogent Sciences, if it's internally known, that Cogen Social Sciences is a predatory or vanity journal, one journal that has apparent scholarly legitimacy, even if no or low impact, intentionally transferring it to a known predatory journal is a gigantic, gigantic academic misconduct problem.

0:11:18 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Okay.

0:12:02 Thomas: I think we can break that down a little bit, um, and I'm, I'm with you and I respect, I'm not trying to, I don't need to accuse anybody of anything, but just breaking down what you're talking about, so can you tell me what your definition, I guess, of a predatory journal would be, just so everybody's on the same page?

0:12:17 James: A predatory journal is going to be one that literally is accepting money in order to publish papers with absolutely no attempt to credential itself seriously, just in order to generate a profit. In other words, they are, are taking advantage of desperate academics who need to try to publish only for the purposes of trying to make money off of them. So if Cogent, the whole Cogents series, or Cogentes Social Sciences in specific, has overall the intention of trying to become a legitimate open access journal and is trying but not succeeding, that does not make them predatory, nor does it necessarily make them vanity. And to accuse them of being such could constitute libel.

0:13:02 James: And so now I find myself, sadly, because I should be able to be like, oh my gosh, this journal has to suck. Now I have to feel like, oh, I have to kind of defend the journal that took this ridiculous paper because people may be committing libel and I'm not getting wrapped up in that.

0:13:16 Thomas: Well, that's one way of looking at it, but the other way of looking at it is if your stated motivation all along was to disprove gender studies, then you have an interest in the journal being more reputable. I mean, you would have a bias. But also, Let me also say there's no libel. There's no possibility of libel there. I'm pretty confident of that. There's evidence of, public evidence now, I'll put it this way, if you can say that Hillary, you know, killed some people in a pizza place and then just say, well, we have sources and that's not liable, then I'm sure this, I'm sure we're good on this.

But anyway, what I'm seeing from you online now and what I'm hearing now is that you're, it's like you have to either say it's an out known predatory journal or it's legitimate, and I think there's just, there's going to be a spectrum, and I think the evidence we have right now, even if we're just looking at your skeptic article, is that they have no real review process, they have someone, if, if it's even a real person working for, for them reviewing, that can't spell capture correctly. So I

0:13:26 James: Sure. So, so

0:14:16 Thomas: Would say that's all the evidence you need, that you can, I mean, I don't know what how you define predatory technically, I don't know legally, like if, if the journal has, if they've ticked the boxes of what they need to technically be considered a review process, maybe they're not technically predatory, but I mean, you can see they gave your paper no real review. So just from that evidence alone, it's not a legitimate journal. And just to add one more point to it, as Phil Torres points out, Cogent isn't even about gender studies, and not a single senior editor of the journal has an academic background in the field of gender studies. So go ahead.

0:14:54 James: I'm going to, let me preface

0:14:55 Thomas: Of

0:14:56 James: The response to that with a question, because I want to to know what it would take for me to say to convince you of my point of view from where you are now. And my point of view is that I don't know, and I'm unwilling to claim that the journal is a vanity journal or a predatory journal. Now, saying that, here are two things. One will be, the second will be a story. The first is the story of how we got there again. So the first is, if this journal is in fact predatory or vanity, and it is hiding that fact successfully, and other journals within the same publishing group are deferring to it, that's its own problem that we should be happy is being exposed. If our hoax has done nothing more than bring enormous attention to the fact that this open access journal problem exists, then, or even the predatory journal, whether this one is one or not, both problems are now highlighted, then we have still achieved a success.

0:15:42 Thomas: Course.

0:16:02 James: Now, was it, so, okay, so then you already have admitted that you're on the same path to being to where I am. So now let me tell you the story again to the part where we got transferred. This is where I kind of got cut off. So we get transferred from the Norma Journal, which of course is low impact. I just picked one that looked like it would fit.

0:16:02 Thomas: Yeah, but the way you put it there, if it did nothing more than that, I would be right by your side. I would be cheering you on.

0:16:20 Thomas: Okay.

0:16:29 Thomas: Zero impact, by the way. Okay.

0:16:31 James: Sure, zero impact. I don't care. I picked one that looked like it would fit based on looking through the list. Remember, I didn't think the thing was going to get published. I had no real intention of picking a top one thinking that it would get it published. So there's masculinity studies. Okay, whatever that is, let's go. And so I picked that. Then we get sent to Cogent immediately. And my initial email was, I don't know if we need to take on the project of open access journaling, but what do you think? And we started researching the journal, noticing how it's well indexed. We emailed them and asked, how well are you indexed? You know, are you serious?

What's your impact factor? Back, we're not impact factor, we don't have an impact factor yet, we're trying to get one, we're working on being indexed, here are 17 scholarly indices to which we belong, and then we carry the, you know, the the full support of the Taylor and Francis publishing group. And then if you go to the Taynor and Francic editorial services page where they announce the existence of the Cogent series, Taylor Francis seems very, very positive about this program, which, again, if the thing is known internally to be vanity or predatory, that's really bad for them. And so

0:16:39 Thomas: Sure. Right.

0:17:39 James: I can't conclude independently

0:17:39 Thomas: Although I will just, just a quick point out on their website, it does say Cogent is run independently from Taylor & Francis. So it's, it's, yeah.

0:17:48 James: And yet still having papers internally directed to it. So if Taylor and Francis is, so it's like, what did the president know? And when did he know it?

0:17:53 Thomas: Yeah, they're affiliated, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

0:17:57 James: What did Taylor and Frances know? When did they know it, if they know it is a predatory journal and they're using other journals to direct, there's a problem. We've Exposed that. So once it came to an open access journal, we had to decide that our target had changed. Our intention behind the project had changed? Sure, it started to try to lampoon gender studies. And as far as lampooning goes, as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have both pointed out publicly, this is a satire and a successful satire of the field. Helen Pluckrose wrote the same thing.

Whether or not it implicates the entire field beyond it being a successful satire like you might read in The Onion or some other place, I don't know. Does it prove that there's a huge publishing problem with gender studies, not on its own, but the fact that we realized when we had now tried as a gender studies and a gender studies journal, directed it to an open access journal, that we now had this situation, so immediately we said, well, it's gonna muddy the water talking to one another, we said it's going to muddy the waters if we publish in an open access journal, people are gonna say, well, it was a journal quality, and other people are going to say, no, it's gender studies.

0:18:00 Thomas: Yeah. Totally agree. Totally agree.

0:19:06 James: And we said, let's see what happens. And so we just went with it and then they took it. So again, we aren't claiming to know which the problem is now.

0:19:15 Thomas: Yeah, you are, though.

0:19:16 James: No, no, no. This is separate. The hoax is not proving that gender studies has a problem. The hope, the fact that the hoax paper is consistent with a large body of literature that is being publicly revealed or publicly promoted by the Real Peer Review Twitter feed, for example, makes it pretty apparent that there is a postmodernism problem happening. So our hoax doesn't say there's, hey, look at this problem in gender studies. We don't have the data to conclude that. What we do have is another body of evidence, which is look at all these similar papers that are in serious journals, that are yes,

0:19:53 Thomas: Well, they're not, you just, I mean, for real peer review, I mean, you just said you got this first journal from them, which doesn't have, has a zero impact score.

0:20:00 James: But they Just retweeted the other day, yet another one that's from Gender and Society, which is The top Ranked Top Rank They're

0:20:06 Thomas: They've been, well, they've been tweeting a lot of articles, and when I read the abstract, a high percentage of the time, they're not even representing what's in the abstract correctly, they just tweet it.

0:20:16 James: A Satire They're not a

0:20:18 Thomas: Oh, so they're Not Required So when they claim, look at this bullshit, they're not required to be honest about it, they can just, and you can cite them as evidence of a problem in gender studies when they're being dishonest About

0:20:19 James: Serious Academic I'm Not citing Them as a problem in gender studies, I'm looking at the actual papers themselves. There's an entire field out there within this nebula of, of the social sciences that's called autoethnography, that it reveals a gigantic problem because it's literally, quite literally, taking away as much objectivity as possible and using the most personally subjective avenue to try to create conclusions as possible. It's the exact opposite of removing cognitive biases from fields, it's, it's introducing the maximum cognitive bias into a field and confirmation bias in particular. This is what I experienced, therefore, for this is a social problem, and here's how I know, because I tell a story. That's autoethnography, you Can say I'm Characterizing It I

0:21:14 Thomas: Could you Not Have Been a little More Careful in your Skeptic article? I don't know who wrote what, but you really were unambiguous, and the fact that everybody got from it, who's publishing this, who's reposting it, like Dawkins, Shermer, everybody got, this is, every once in a while it's necessary and desirable to expose extreme ideologies for what they are. I mean, everybody got from your article that gender studies is the problem, and I don't think it's entirely their fault for getting that impression.

0:21:43 James: Will happily go on the record and say, this is, this is why I think there is a problem worth looking at and why there should be an internal systematic review of the methods and, and uh, of, of gender studies, and to question post-modernist approaches to gender studies. Let me be clear, also, I believe in the, the project of gender cities, it takes a good, good idea. It takes an important topic, and then it goes about it with a severely bad way to do it, and that's ruining what could be genuine good gender scholarship.

0:22:10 Thomas: Can I ask, have you reviewed a lot of articles in gender studies from the actual ones? Because I can say that I haven't. I've seen a few that get posted on real peer review and stuff, which we've established aren't from reputable journals all the time and they're usually misinterpreted. But a lot of the ones on new peer review that they post, where they're making fun of it, it actually asks an interesting question. Like the article will ask some...

0:22:33 James: Well, so do we. We ask an interesting question, but let me finish what I was saying. I firmly believe this, and I've been told by a number of people not to say this because they don't think I need to, and what I believe is that if we would have just turned down the insanity 30 percent, just turned down the insanity a little bit, took out the obvious ridiculousness, that we definitely could have gotten this, especially if we would have found somebody with a significant name, like what happened with the Socal affair. Alan Socal was a recognized scientist, and he got it published, and the editors of Social texts Text openly said, "We are publishing this partly because a notable scientist has now kind of come to see the light." So we figured his name, which is arguing to authority, added weight to to what he was saying. Therefore, we published it. So if we had a more notable name behind us and we turn the ridiculousness down a tiny percent, 30, 25 percent, I have no doubt that within not terribly long, we could have gotten this in one of the top.

0:22:37 Thomas: Sure.

0:23:30 Thomas: Well then why didn't you do that? I mean, or why didn't you do part of that? And also, have you seen the Sokol quote by now that I'm sure you've seen? Sokol said about his own paper, From the mere fact of publication of my parody, I think that not much can be deduced. It doesn't prove that the whole field of cultural studies or cultural studies of science, much less sociology of science, is nonsense, nor does it prove the intellectual standards in these fields are generally lax. All all it does is show that one journal was, they're you derelict in their intellectual duty or something like that. I don't know why the quote I had was cut off, but that's what he says after that. I mean, have you seen that?

0:24:06 James: I have seen that. Yes.

0:24:07 Thomas: Was published in an actual journal with, you know, like, and so let me ask you this.

0:24:11 James: Which had no peer review, by the way. Social text had no pure review at that point.

0:24:14 Thomas: Yeah. Let me ask you this. What would look different about what you guys did if the problem were 100% the journal? What would look different?

0:24:23 James: If it was 100 percent to journal.

0:24:25 Thomas: Yes, if the problem was this journal did not give a shit, didn't review it, they're a bad journal. And by the way, the other point I was gonna make about your paper, even if you wrote more compelling nonsense that could get through, it shouldn't get through just because of the sourcing you use. So regardless of what the paper says, if you're using sources that aren't real and a fake source generator, that should get picked up no matter what, with any sort of review. But anyway, what would look different?

0:24:50 James: Well, I've given that a body of thought as well. And the The simple explanation for that oversight, and I don't know what would have happened with a more serious journal, is that fringe sources are going to be, especially in social commentary, fringe sources may be cited all the time. So why would you expect them to be in cross-reference databases and things? Although the fact that we named one of our fictitious authors scammerin, starting with scam on purpose, was supposed to be a red flag to give it away. But I don't know. No. So if it was one,

0:25:19 Thomas: So what would look different if it was 100%, if what you did essentially was go post your paper on it, like nail it to a tree and say this disproves gender studies because this tree accepted our paper. Like what would look different if it were 100% the journal's fault as I believe it is?

0:25:35 James: Probably, to be honest with you, the reactions to the to the publication of it and the article that we wrote, because, like I said, it's become a nearly perfect litmus test. And there are people who are absolutely ironclad that the problem is one thing or the other or another or another, depending on who they are. And so, for

0:25:54 Thomas: I don't, I don't think you're not, I don't think, did you misunderstand the question? Okay, go ahead. Sorry, I just, I think you, I don't, okay, go ahead.

0:25:56 James: Example, no, I think that if this had been done in merely a just crap journal, an utterly crap journal we wouldn't see ridiculous – I mean the source of the parody of gender studies comes from for instance a headline written about us in Salon today, Tale of Two Hoaxes. The Seth Rich conspiracy theory, and conceptual penis prank both expose a fear of women's power that's preposterous. It does not expose a fear of woman's power. We're not afraid of woman power, we're afraid of bad philosophy or sophistry taking over an important academic field. I can't tell if there's good gender studies, and there have to be, but I can tell because they're drowned out by the number of papers that say things that that are just patently ridiculous, just absolute gibberish or horrifying.

0:26:53 James: For example, another example, papers that are claiming that the scientific method is inherently sexist and science needs to be reinvented without it. In other words, we need to reduce our ability to detect bias and overcome it because we are humans, we do make mistakes. We need to reduce our ability to cut away bias because we believe that the method that we have must somehow be sexist because we can make some social commentary, some threaded together argument just like the thing in Salon. The Seth Rich conspiracy theory and the conceptual penis are threaded together somehow by a fear of women's power. I have no fear of woman's power, I celebrate woman's power, but what is this crap?

0:27:36 Thomas: But it's it's More the reaction To It but But I want to Rephrase the question Because It's Not what I was asking, I mean, you're you're you're you answered with the reaction, I want, I'm, I want to know, pretend you got all the way to the point where you were, you just haven't hit publish on the Skeptic article yet, so it hasn't come out. What about your experience, like the data we have, which is your whole hoax paper in the in the journals and what they did, that's the data we have, that's what you guys have put forth saying, "This presents a huge problem, might be one of three problems, but it presents a huge problem with gender studies." If the problem were entirely with the journal, what

0:27:38 James: Yes. Why is this reaction happening?

0:28:09 James: Mm-hmm.

0:28:10 Thomas: Would have changed about how the hoax went down? No,

0:28:14 James: Well, I asked myself this question during the process, and that's why we looked into Cogent. We had other people look into Cogen for us, the people that were peer reviewing our Skeptic piece actually for us. And we examined Cogen. We saw that we asked Cogen, we said this, they said, this is why we don't have an impact factor. It's mostly that we're new and we're working on it. Of course, it's also because nobody cites them, because they, whether they're new or weak or whatever, they're not producing great scholarship, perhaps. But they're indexed in a number of of their index in a member of scholarly indices, which means they are making some kind of attempt to be serious, or at least doing a really good job of looking like they're trying to be serious. They carry the Taylor and Francis and perimeter, even if they are independent, they still have the perimeter put on them.

0:29:02 James: And you can point out that there are other journals that have fallen for similar problems like this all you want. But all that does is say, oh, well, it's very good that we're drawing more attention to the problem because this shouldn't be happening. So you're wanting me to tell you that there's nothing that I can tell whatsoever. There's absolutely no way I could tell whether this was was gender studies is the problem and whether. OK, so like I said, so

0:29:14 Thomas: Yeah, but that's an excuse though, right?

0:29:26 Thomas: Especially with the evidence of the many hoaxes that have happened, including the get me off your fucking email list where you got the same response.

0:29:32 James: Please allow me to repeat myself. I know that's in bad form typically, but please allow me to repeat myself. If there weren't a corpus of literature with which this is nearly indistinguishable, for instance, that squirrels experience racism and sexism. Squirrels. Squirreles.

0:29:52 Thomas: Want to shoot me a link for that one so I can put it in the show notes?

0:29:54 James: I will look it up later. It was again retweeted by Real Peer Review. Or the alligators are teaching boys hegemonic masculinity. Again, on Real Peel Review. They just retweetED it in the last few days. There is a corpus of literature about this that is floating around out there, and I can direct you to any number of people who can talk to you about this at far greater length than I am. I'm vaguely aware of it and thought, hey, let's hoax a thing. If that weren't the case, if that weren'T the case then I would say that we have no evidence.

But the fact that our paper, if at least toned down in the ridiculousness by some percentage, is utterly indistinguishable from things that are actually being published indicates that there's a problem. Our hoax does not indicate that there's a problem. Our hoaks draws attention to a problem that exists. And the problem that exist is the obscurantism in the language used by postmodern people who have infected the gender studies, not to mention the hyperpartisan side of it. And I'm not saying that this isn't going to be a political field. Obviously, gender studies is going to have a political component.

0:30:07 Thomas: Sure.

0:30:54 James: The question is about it being hyper-politicized with a nearly religious orthodoxy where you can't question what happened today. We got accused of sexism, of hating women's empowerment. Why? Because, oh, well, we may be questioned a field of study that looks like it needs some housecleaning. Let me draw a comparison, and people are really giving me crap for this, but I'm going to draw this comparison. In anyway, because this is a real paper published last year in Gender and Society, which is the top gender studies journal, according to multiple impact factor indices.

At the same time, I'll also note that this is way down on the list. The top gender studies Journal is something like 993rd in overall impact. It's not a very impactful field, but this is the topic that I'm going to talk about. But this is the top one. Okay. So I'm I'm going to start by saying that what our paper was ultimately about was, okay, so penises are anatomical organs, but we shouldn't match them with reproductive organs for men. We should actually look at them as this masculine idea that causes problems. And of course, then we just went over the top with it.

Here is part of the beginning and the end of the abstract for Not a Real Period, Social Social and Material Constructions of Menstruation by Katie Ann Hasson, published October 5th, 2016 in Gender and Society, the top gender studies journal. Abstract. Despite a great deal of feminist work that has highlighted its social construction, menstruation seems a self-evidently natural bodily process. Yet, how menstruation is defined or what counts as menstruation, is rarely questioned.

0:31:39 Thomas: Yeah, but, okay, that doesn't matter, but go ahead.

0:32:31 James: Talks a little bit about birth control. Then it goes on and says, "The case of menstrual suppression birth control pills provides an opportunity to study the work of redefining a biological process understood as quintessentially natural and deeply significant for gendered embodiment, as well as a challenge to consider both the social and material construction of gendered bodies." That's qualitatively, except that she proceeded seriously, identical to what we did with the penis. She's talking about menstruation, we could have talked about the penis seriously by turning down the ridiculousness and would have had a high likelihood of being able to get our paper published without even knowing what we're talking about in the top gender studies journal.

0:33:10 Thomas: But then you needed to do that. Like, if that's what you wanted to do, you needed to do that, or your original skeptic article needed to actually provide more evidence because your skeptic article was written as a victory, a victory march in your case against gender studies, oh, and also the open access journal problem, and it was picked up as such. I just feel like this is, it's a little dishonest, man, and that's what's hurting us so much about this, like...

0:33:15 James: I mean, it's been picked up by climate change deniers as a conquest of climate science also, which is ridiculous.

0:33:41 Thomas: But if we look at the the the reason I was asking about what would be different if it was all the journal, I mean, there was a MIT sure, you've heard all this MIT grad students created an algorithm that just made fake science papers, and 120 of them were published, yeah.

0:33:53 James: Good. So we're drawing even more more attention to a problem that appears to be with open access publishing.

0:33:58 Thomas: And that draws no attention that that fact, similar to yours, draws zero percent of a conclusion about the field itself.

0:34:06 James: Because science possesses rigorous methods by which it is self-correcting, whereas postmodern gender studies openly is hostile to the idea that there should be such corrections, and that is in their literature, that it isn't hoaxes. So because we can trust science to try to be self-corrective and to to clean its house when these errors happen within its publication, within its publication library, we should also look at the fact that gender studies should be doing the same thing, but they are openly hostile to the idea and contrary to what the scientific endeavor is doing.

0:34:44 Thomas: Look, I should have said this at the beginning, I don't even care about gender studies personally. I think there's likely, I bet you, I bet you you and I have a very similar view of gender studies.

0:34:54 James: I bet we don't because I do care about it because I think there are extremely, extremely important questions about gender.

0:34:57 Thomas: No, no, sorry, let me, let me clarify.

0:35:01 James: Like, what is gender? Why does gender represent the way it is? What is privilege?

0:35:02 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, let me clarify. We have

0:35:04 James: Why is there privilege?

0:35:04 Thomas: The exact view. We might have the exact same view about gender studies. What I meant to say, I shouldn't use shorthand. What I meant to say is my whole problem with your article and your hoax has nothing to do with gender studies. Gender studies may be completely bunk. It may be 90%. It may be only 10% crap. I don't know, I don't know the answer to that question. We would need to, as Sokol said in his own words about his hoax, you would actually need other methods to check whether or not it's, it's, sure.

0:35:34 James: Yes, like a systematic internal review to check the scientific rigor of the field. And if the field is openly publishing papers calling to overthrow the scientific method because it's sexist and questions its results, there is a problem.

0:35:39 Thomas: What I, what, can you give me links to those papers?

0:35:49 James: I can. Or you can go to real peer review and find them yourself in the next 10 minutes just like I will. So

0:35:53 Thomas: Okay, so if I go find those and they are cited zero times and have no impact of any kind, is there still the same problem in gender studies? Because presumably, if gender studies has a problem, even these papers, these extreme papers would be cited by other papers, right? And they'd be like, oh yeah, this is true, let's bring down the scientific method, as these people said. I

0:36:12 James: The top-cited paper in Gender Studies, in the top cited journal in Gender and Society again, was from 1987 called On Gender. And it's like Zimmerman and West, I think. I don't have it in front of me, so I'm going to maybe get the details slightly wrong. But it contains a sentence in the abstract that gender is best thought of as a accomplishment. Accomplishment? What does that mean? This is the most cited paper. The gender is an accomplishment in

0:36:44 Thomas: Don't know, I'd have to read the paper. I'll read the paper. Maybe I'll get back at you after I read it.

0:36:48 James: Terms of everyday interactions. Are problems to where you start reading things like this and you're just like, what does this mean? Why is this a foundation of an academic field? But if you study the history, my Twitter bio says I'm a thinker, not a philosopher. I distance myself from the same problems. I have criticized it too much to my detriment, the field of academic philosophy. Peter and I just published a chapter. It came out in a book from Wiley and Blackwell, a chapter in an actual philosophy textbook, arguing that philosophy has a major problem with producing quality work of abiding significance and making progress. Progress. Of course, there are problems in other fields, which is why fields should have internal systematic reviews going on to correct themselves and to cut away biases. But instead, what we see, just like this piece in Salon, and I'm not talking about Phil Torres's piece, this one's by Amanda Marcotte, where it says that we are directly challenging or directly afraid of, I'm sorry, sorry, the empowerment of women. This is not an attempt to have a discussion that can further truth.

0:37:04 Thomas: Do you not think you'd have the same experience in philosophy? If you read the obscure, that's fine, but...

0:38:04 James: This isn't an attempt shut us up because we've said something that might cast doubt on part of a field, which if the field were cleaned up, would do more to benefit problems related to gender, race, and so on than anything else.

0:38:17 Thomas: Okay, I know you're out of time. I'll try to respond to just that.

0:38:21 James: Yes, I actually am. Thank you.

0:38:23 Thomas: My concern with you guys, and with a lot of the reaction, is yeah, because you're, what you did is evidence of one thing. There's only one thing it's evidence of, or maybe two if you want to bring in the Norma Journal and the fact that it might be endorsing Bullshit Journal. Your article is evidence, your whole hoax is evidence that that journal sucks. That's all it's evidence of. If you wanted to do a more lengthy article that talked about the other articles that you've seen in peer review, that did a collection of them, a meta study, that would be one thing. But the fact that you published this with language, by the way, here's another quote, "Our question about the fundamental integrity of fields like gender studies seems much more pressing nonetheless," and made it pretty unambiguous that there's a huge problem with gender studies, even though you acknowledge there's multiple things your hoax is proving. The fact that you published it...

0:39:11 James: It's not proving anything. If it proves anything, prove is a strong word, if it proves anything, but it draws attention to a lot of things, if it proves any there is some problem in academic publishing. That's the most, as we say in the conclusion of our paper.

0:39:24 Thomas: Right. Well, that's right.

0:39:26 James: Now also, let me talk very briefly.

0:39:27 Thomas: And the fact that every... Can I just

0:39:29 James: I don't have time.

0:39:29 Thomas: Finish this thought? I know you don't have time, but I mean, I really feel like I've let You take the majority of the time, but it's the fact that this has been latched onto with such ferocity. Now, I know you're kind of painting it as, oh, well, everybody has their biases and people on one side are looking at this way, people on the other side are looking the other way. I mean, I think that's kind of a bit of... I think it might be largely true, but... It's also a bit of a dodge because we can just look at the facts of the matter, and the fact is the only thing your thing proves, as you just said, maybe is that maybe proves there's a problem with academic publishing in some way. It doesn't say anything, you know, I won't talk about proof, it says almost nothing about gender studies, especially given the fact that, you know, again, of the Get Me Off Your Fucking Email List was done in a higher, more reputable journal and got a similar result. So the fact that everybody has presented this, and Richard Dawkins and

0:39:32 James: Please, quickly.

0:40:20 Thomas: All the leaders of atheism, that everybody, I mean massive amounts, a high percentage of the skeptic and atheist community was willing to run with this, and I know this might, but this wasn't your personal intention, was willing to run with your article because of the way it was phrased and say this took down gender studies, this hoax finally someone took down gender studies, that has been the narrative. That is what I think can be legitimately viewed as an hatred of gender studies, as a bias looking for any reason to shut that down, and people within that field who are largely marginalized people, who are largely women or trans people, whatever, to whom that field matters the most, see that as an attack on them. The fact that it was so public and there was such a broad reaction in that direction. Well,

0:41:06 James: I can't help how people want to take something. Our original intent was to outline the two problems independently and then to to draw them together in a conclusion that says there is a two-pronged problem. The part our hoax does not, as I said before and will say again, our hoaxy does not say that there is necessarily a problem with gender studies, but the overwhelming consistency with which it represents itself against other papers which are copiously shared by real peer review, for example. The similarity, the reason that people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have run with this, if I might guess at their motivation, because it's our motivation for having done the hoax in the first place, is because it is overwhelmingly clear that the postmodern moralistic architecture on the far left of gender studies is eaten up with this particular problem.

0:41:59 James: And they're writing papers that have clear ideological bias. They are loading them with jargon that's nearly impenetrable. This is just an objective fact about the field. So if you care about issues related to gender, as I have spoken on your podcasts in the past at length that I clearly do, then you have to care about the feel that's at the greatest opportunity for working with it to get its shit in order, to get it's house clean. That's what we said in the conclusion, is that there should be house cleaning, not get rid of gender studies, house cleaning, internal systematic review of the field to get its methods up to snuff and what has to go has to do in order to do that.

0:42:45 James: Gender studies should be a leader in coming to conclusions, good conclusions, about the problems related to gender in society, the discrimination, privilege, and so on. As I've mentioned, as we've discussed, it should be answering questions like what is gender and why does it present the way that it does. To do that, it has to hedge closely to good replicable psychology, neuroscience, andso on.

0:43:10 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, we agree on that, but

0:43:12 James: Yes but it doesn't That's the problem. It doesn't we

0:43:13 Thomas: What we don't agree on is what... I agree, and if someone showed that, I would support that. If someone demonstrated that case in Skeptic Magazine, I would support that. Can I just ask you, why didn't you just wait or try again? If your thesis is true that would have gotten picked up had you done this or that, like you would have gotten it picked up in a major journal, why didn't you just do that? I mean, it strikes me that you just jumped the gun.

0:43:39 James: Have you know that's that's probably my fault that I had zero percent faith that it would actually work. I just think that writing satire for for my own part is fun. I can write satire I guess pretty well and I think it's fun I

0:43:51 Thomas: Yeah you know I think it was funny. I think that I think the hoax paper itself, like, it is good satire personally, but why didn't you just like try again to a higher journal or try to get one in the top 100 or try, or or and

0:44:03 James: Didn't think it would go. Peter said that repeatedly, but I never thought it would, and I was in charge of submitting it. And so there we go.

0:44:05 Thomas: Well but once but once it did go then you had the evidence of, oh, this can actually work, let's, why don't we shoot, do another one, because, as you said, you can whip them up at the drop of a hat, do another one and try to get it into a top journal, so we have a more of a case

0:44:18 James: Well, because, well, I mean, we could do that, I guess, but I don't think that becoming pranksters really furthers a serious academic career. I would rather just do want to be done with it, if that makes any sense. I don't want to be a prankster. I wrote Life and Light of Death as a serious discussion about humanism's collision with existentialism.

0:44:38 Thomas: Yeah, but you would only have to write about, you wouldn't have to tell anybody about the first one. You'd just wait until you got a better, you know, like, you'd still write one skeptic article that would have all the response. I'm not saying it would take any more of your life. Like, do you, do you regret any of that? The fact, I know your answer has been, and to a certain extent, I respect it because to a certain extent, yes, people are going to run with whatever, but with the, the, I guess this, just the homogeneity of The reaction of major skeptics, including Sam who, by the way, did you hear the Sam Harris episode where he talked about you? Did not mention once the problem with publication, with pay to play, didn't mention the journal, none of that.

0:45:11 James: Yes.

0:45:22 James: Of course, I'd be happy to talk to Sam in detail about the nuances here if that were to come about.

0:45:27 Thomas: But I'm just, I just want to ask you, do you regret any of your wording in the article? Should you have, should you have, because this is my belief, if this was, if what I'm getting from you is true and you, you know, the way you feel, if you wanted to demonstrate the actual case against gender studies, you should have cited, you more papers and like made the case that way, or you should have stuck to what your paper actually proved, what your hoax actually proved, which was there's a problem with this journal and there's a problem with publishing. Do you, do you regret any of the language?

0:45:28 James: So, no, I don't regret, I do not regret any of the language and I'm not going to walk back on that. We wrote that the way we wanted to write it.

0:46:00 Thomas: Alright, well, I don't know what to say then, like, I just, I don't get it, I just, it just feels so, feels so dishonest to me, man, like, you know that this doesn't prove anything about gender studies, but, yeah.

0:46:11 James: I just said like 12 times on your show it doesn't prove anything about gender studies. It draws attention to a problem that proves itself.

0:46:17 Thomas: Alright, well, I know you're out of time, so I guess I can try to let you go. You're over time.

0:46:20 James: Yeah, I'm over time actually. I've got to get to work.

0:46:23 Thomas: I gotta say, I appreciate your time, James. I appreciate you, you know, coming on, defending your views. We respectfully disagree, but thanks for giving me the time, and sorry that we went along, but me

0:46:34 James: I've always enjoyed talking to you, Thomas, so I appreciate it and I look forward to talking to you again.

0:46:36 Thomas: To you as well. Alright, thanks,

0:46:39 James: So, no, I, I will, obviously.

0:46:40 Thomas: James. Have a good day. Me neither. I mean, if you listen to my episode with Eli, I pretty disappointed in this. Like, I'm pretty upset over this, but I do, I mean, I I don't know what to say. So, I still respect you as a person and respect your work, but I just can't believe this, man. I can't believe the article, the skeptic article, but whatever. We don't have time to go more into it.

0:47:01 Thomas: So, well, thank you as well for coming on.

0:47:00 James: I always appreciate straightforward honesty, so thank you. Cheers.

0:47:29 Thomas: Alright, so that's what James had to say in the limited time. He went over the time he said he would. I do appreciate that, but I also do need to say that I did feel rushed. There's more I wish I could have challenged him on, but he gave a pretty strict timeline. I'm definitely... I tried to respect that and I also respect the amount of time he was willing to give. So what you're about to hear could have been Thursday's episode, but I did not want to do three episodes on this. So this is a long, long podcast. Treat this as essentially a separate episode, an analysis, sort of a post analysis, and it is based on the list that James sent me after the recording. And so it's a little long, it's preachy, I understand that, but it's because I believe in this and I believe That this is a horrendous, embarrassing situation and I'm going to tell you why.

0:48:17 Thomas: I also want to note that originally I had Andrew come on after and tell me about the libel claims and all that, and he offered a little bit of analysis. That was going to be the ending to this episode until James sent me this list, and then this became something I absolutely have to get out there. So if you want to find my little recording with Andrew, it's sort of another post-mortem on this. Really interesting stuff. We all love Andrew. Find that on patreon.com slash seriouspod. But for now, here's essentially another mini-episode of SIO4U about the sources that James sent me.

0:48:56 Thomas: So... You heard me multiple times during that say, hey, give me the source on that. Let me check that out. Give me the source. After the recording, I emailed him to remind him for sources. Please give me those sources. He gave me those sources. And guys, I have to say the email that I received from James with the sources for me to put in the show notes, so this is a public thing, is one of the most disappointing emails I have ever received.

It is a list of Essentially, what I can only guess, I emailed him back, haven't gotten a response. It's what I can only guess is just ripped straight from that real peer review Twitter account. And it's simply gross straw men and deliberate, I think, deliberate Misrepresentations of these studies or papers or whatever that's being published, and that is the foundation upon which a lot of people's, including James's, conception of gender studies is. I'm going to go through all of these. I went through and researched all of these. I'm going to tell you about them.

I'm going to start in order of importance because he just gave me a bunch of links to studies and a description of them, which I think, I think, not sure, I hope is taken from Real Peer Review. If these are James' actual descriptions of these, that's horrifying because they are just terrible. I'm gonna give you some examples.

But I went through and grabbed the number of times all of these papers have been cited to give an idea of what actual impact these have and how you can measure whether or not they're significant in the field of gender studies.

0:50:28 Thomas: So he just gave me a list in no particular order. I did the research and reordered it by how many times these papers were cited. So the first six I'm going to go through are cited by exactly zero papers. No papers cite these papers. So to draw any conclusion about gender studies from papers that are cited zero times is worthless. I hope everybody's on board with that. If someone just writes a paper, gets it in some sort of journal and nobody thinks it's significant at all, nobody thinks the paper, even within gender studies, mind you, this is not like, oh, how often are math papers citing it or something, just being cited by other gender studies papers, which if the entire field were broken, you would suspect that even these terrible papers would be cited because people would be like, oh yeah, that's a great paper. So these are cited by zero.

0:51:13 Thomas: So despite the fact that they say nothing about gender studies, when I look at the horrible misrepresentation of these in James' descriptions, which I think are taken from Real Peer Review, it's disgusting. Look what's happening and tell me if you think this is science. Tell me if you think this is legitimate scholarly inquiry. The first one I happened to click on was the worst because it caught my eye. Here's the link he sent me.

This is James' exact words: "Fat men's penises might not exist, comma, social construction." So yeah, I guess if you see that tweeted, that sounds alarming. Wow, some idiot is writing a paper saying fat men's penises might not exist. Holy crap, that's terrible. First off, cited by zero, but when I looked into this paper, and I will give you all these links, they will be in the show notes. And I'm doing what everybody's doing, by the way, and looking, reading the abstract, because that's what all these these people do, that's what Real Peer Review does. They read the abstract, they're not reading the whole paper. And for me to read the whole paper, I don't have access to scholarly journals, it would cost literally thousands upon thousands of dollars to do this, but I can read the abstract and I can draw some conclusions, and they're even making a poor straw man of the abstract.

So this paper, which he taught, which his description was "fat men's penises might not exist," was actually a paper that takes a look at fat male sexuality. It uses those words, those aren't my words. So it's looking at fat men in movies, pop culture, and it's looking at how their sexuality is portrayed. And it comes to the conclusion that it's either ridiculous, like it's, it's, it's sort of a polluting thing, like Fat Bastard or whatever in Austin Powers.

0:52:48 Thomas: It's It's looked at as this gross, polluting kind of thing. Or it's ignored. Or it doesn't exist. So fat men in media, their sexuality is either ignored or pollutes. And this is the quote that I think the straw man description is based on because it's the only thing that's even close. Here's a quote from the abstract: "Fat male sexuality paradoxically doesn't exist and in existing pollutes." So that's interesting to me. Does that not seem like a legitimate study? Like if someone wants to say, hey, how are overweight men portrayed in movies sexually, like how, what's their sexuality like? They All the sources that they went through, there's a bunch of them, the movies, and etc., and they went through it and said, here's what it looks like. It's either gross in movies, like it's depicted as a disgusting thing, or it's ignored. That's interesting.

0:53:37 Thomas: Is that not a legitimate thing to look into? Is that like beneath us as scholars? Or, in my opinion, is the horrible straw man description of that, which is fat men's penises might not exist, is that awful straw man beneath scholarship? Because that's my view. Could you truly say that James is the one, James and Peter Boghossian, who are using this to make a determination about a field that they are not in? Who are using a strawman parody account, as Eli emphasized a lot. These are the descriptions from that account or James' descriptions, either or. Using that to make a determination about a field they don't have expertise in is the epitome of anti-intellectual, in my opinion.

0:54:22 Thomas: I've said multiple times, and I said during this, that I don't really have an opinion about gender studies. You know why? Because I haven't studied it. I have no degree in it. I haven't done a lot of reading. I've done a lot more reading now because I've read through all of these abstracts, and some of these had the paper for free so I read some of these papers. I know more about it now. I think maybe there could be some bullshit in gender studies, and there might be in other fields, and it would be interesting to try to do some qualitative look at Here's the next one. "Male lactation can exist through social construction" is James' summary of it. Cited by zero papers. But what this paper does is it looks at the spectrum of male breastfeeding in mammals. And it looks from actual milk production in some mammals, so apparently there's some mammals, I don't know which mammals those are, but there's some that actually produce milk, the male produces milk, to by humans identifying as male.

And then finally to like a simulated breastfeeding done by, I guess, biologically men, human males. So it looks at the spectrum of like what what male breastfeeding is in mammals, and it draws some conclusions about it. I don't, is it, is that postmodernist nonsense? I don't know.

I mean, it just takes a look at some science and some facts about the world and it talks about them in a, in a world in which gender identity is now more fluid and a lot of people identify differently than what their sexual assignment was at birth, that's interesting.

0:55:56 Thomas: I mean, it's something, again, cited by zero, by the way, but still not the straw man that it's made up to be. "Periods are a social construct" is the next one. This just talks about the difference between, like, with their, since there's birth control and other pills that prevent menstruation but women still bleed while on them, it just talks philosophically about, well, what does that mean then? Are they still menstruating? And then if that's true, like, what is menstruating? Is it just bleeding? If What are the maybe the implications for trans women on menstruating? I'm not terribly interested in that, but is it, is it for me to march into that field and say, no, this is not valid to write a paper about this. Gosh, this is really disappointing. I laugh because this is horrendously disappointing. This is another horrible, horrible misrepresentation in this email by James that he should be embarrassed about.

0:56:45 Thomas: He should be embarrassed about this. "Alligators teach hegemonic masculinity." Again, cited zero times. If you go and read the abstract and actually look at it, that is a horrible straw man. Looks like what the people did in this paper, the author or authors, they observed people at a zoo, and it talks about how these parents like assigned different gender roles to animals and kind of used gender norms to determine like which animals were what gender, and they use that to kind of reinforce gender roles to their children. So, it's examining maybe how gender roles are reinforced through this lens of, here's what happened at the zoo when I observed people at a zoo and how they behaved.

0:57:30 Thomas: Is that "alligators teach hegemonic masculinity"? No. That's a fucking straw man. Here's another one. This one, I'll he just labeled it as squirrels. I think it was the squirrel one he mentioned, and I think he labeled it as "squirrels experience racism" in the podcast, if I remember correctly. I read this one. It is cited zero times. I'll be honest, I do not understand it. So, congratulations, this paper I personally don't understand. Again, it could be nonsense, or it could just be that I'm not someone in this field so it's using language that I don't totally understand. I'm not sure. I can't make a determination. Also, it's been cited zero times so it's not critical to the field. But it talks about something like studying squirrel populations in LA area because they, I don't know, it's confusing.

0:58:16 Thomas: I don't know what it is. So, on that one, I say I don't know. Could be nonsense, could be I don't understand it. That's what someone who actually has intellectual curiosity would do. They'd say, maybe I would need to read more about that or understand the field more. Next one, feminists see themselves as activists to infect other fields of study with ideological biases, compare themselves favorably to viruses like HIV and Ebola. Again, cited by zero people. This is the last one cited by zero papers. I would say this is a good opportunity maybe to talk about a critical point of a lot of gender studies and feminist studies in general is they, the view seems to be, if I were to summarize, again, I'm a lay person, I don't, I don't know for sure, but it seems to be part of feminist studies that science and knowledge and all that, white men, and usually well-off white men, who was able to do science for so long?

0:59:08 Thomas: Who was able to do philosophy for so long? Who was more published? That demographic has had a stranglehold on knowledge in a way. A lot of these papers, the gist of them is, well, we take a different approach. Involves maybe more experience. It involves at least getting women To be able to be into these fields so that maybe they would approach them differently? I don't know. And so this paper, from what I can tell, says with this realization that Women, and I suppose like a feminist outlook, is new to a lot of fields. They want to spread it to different fields and see if it yields any results. To see if, okay, maybe if this is a field where men have dominated forever, if women study it, maybe they approach things differently, maybe they ask different questions, maybe they'll find something different.

1:00:00 Thomas: Cited by zero people, by the way. So there you go. I don't know. That's my interpretation of it. That's what it looks like. Is it for me to say that that's nonsense? I'm not sure. Here's one that's now we're getting decided by one paper. So we're in a whole new ballpark now, from zero to one. Donated blood is a social construction is what James typed to me. It examines what the actually happens when we donate blood, and this, is this is a weird paper, I don't really get the point of it, again. Is it for me to get the point of it? I don't know, but it goes through a bunch of it studied like the processes that make something "donated blood" in quotes, like what constitutes donated blood. We think of it as this like person-to-person interaction where we go, we give our blood, then it goes into somebody else, but they were saying that when they studied it, it went through all this scientific I process to where it becomes kind of unrecognizable, and it's not as personal as you would think when you donate it.

1:00:55 Thomas: And I don't know what this has to do with gender studies. I have no idea. It doesn't seem to be gender studies related at all. But I don't know. It's kind of fascinating, I guess. What we think of as one thing is kind of another. Is it for me to say, is it for James to say this paper didn't deserve to be written? You know, I don't know. I don't know. You read the abstract, tell me what you think. This one's cited by two, so this is a huge one. And this is a big deal. This one is, James titled the description, stem syllabi are sexist because focus on facts. That's his description. So, when I read this one I think it's interesting Because we all know that there's a huge disparity in gender interest in STEM fields. We all know that women don't go into STEM fields and we all know that STEM fields are more profitable, so it contributes to the gender pay gap.

1:01:43 Thomas: So it's definitely a problem that you would want to take a look at. And this paper seems to be taking a crack at the issue by saying, by examining the question, like, does this begin even at the syllabi level? Like when you hand out your syllabus for your STEM class, Does the language of the syllabus reinforce a kind of masculine language? Does it turn women away from STEM? Now that's an interesting question. I don't know. I would argue with a lot of that paper. Like if I read that, that paper was available in its entirety. I read a lot of it, not 100% of it, but probably like 80% of it. And there's some stuff I would probably take issue with. I mean, it's portrayed as like more forceful requirement language is masculine and more may kind of language.

1:02:30 Thomas: Like, oh, you may be required to do this or that, you know, that's portrayed as more feminine. And it says that STEM fields, it's all very masculine at all. You know, read the paper if you want. If you want to take that on, write a paper that refutes it. And by the way, this paper is cited by two other papers, so put that in perspective. But it's a question that you can look at. And to dismiss it as postmodernist garbage, I think is an error. I mean, we can look, we can evaluate that question. We can look and say, is this, we can test it. Does this masculine language, alleged masculine language, does it turn women away from STEM fields? That's a testable hypothesis. That's an interesting paper. What is the big deal here? I can't believe how intellectually lazy this approach that James took is.

1:03:17 Thomas: I really can't. It's embarrassing. And by the way, I've emailed him letting him know I'm going to talk about this. I hope he's listening. James, this is beneath you. Far, far beneath you. Because here's the next one. It says, your description, James, was Wikipedia shouldn't demand sources because sexism. That was your description. Or, it. You sent it to me. I clicked on this. First off, cited by four papers. Ooh, four papers. Now we're getting somewhere. A little bit more relevant to the field. Now, This paper starts with an interesting and valid premise. It says Wikipedia is held up as a collaborative kind of public space of knowledge. And a lot of people trust Wikipedia. I trust Wikipedia a lot, but it says the editors are vastly disproportionately male. So I think to myself, I'm thinking, well, I wonder what the consequences of that are.

1:04:04 Thomas: That sounds fascinating. That's something someone could write a paper about. And here's a quote, for "I argue that Wikipedia's insistence on separating embodied subjectivity from the production of knowledge limits the site's ability to facilitate any substantial subversive feminist rhetorical action. These limitations, I suggest, should inform a critical pedagogical approach to Wikipedia." Do you hear that? "These limitations, I suggest, should inform a critical pedagogical approach to Wikipedia." Do you hear in that, "Wikipedia shouldn't demand sources because sexism"? Because I don't. And if you read it, you won't either. Unless you are a fan of horrendously strawmanning an academic work, which I think is intellectually atrocious.

1:04:56 Thomas: What I see is, wow, someone is saying, because there are no women writing for Wikipedia, that should maybe inform how we look at certain areas of Wikipedia. That's what I see. Sounds reasonable. Here's the next atrocious straw man. This one is summarized by James thusly: pregnancy shouldn't be associated with femininity. Okay, this is an article cited by six articles. Wow, new record. Here's a quote: "This study relies on interview data with 14 child-free, masculine-identified lesbians about the ways in which they are able or unable to imagine themselves as pregnant people in their future lives. Participants' navigation of the concept of pregnancy reveals the complexity of gendered bodies and gender practice."

1:05:42 Thomas: End quote. It's fucking interviews. This is a paper where someone interviewed 14 masculine-identified lesbians and asked them, hey, society puts a lot of pressure on you to be a childbearing woman, doesn't it? How do you feel about that? Think about this. Think about what James is saying when he summarizes this as "pregnancy shouldn't be associated with femininity," first off. But also, think about what you're saying if you're someone out there who thinks gender studies is nonsense and you shouldn't be allowed to write this paper. Think about that. If you think no one should be allowed in academia to write a paper where they explore what it's like for masculine, lesbian-identified people to talk about their experience of this, I might find that interesting.

1:06:29 Thomas: You know who else might find that interesting and helpful? Would be other masculine-identified lesbians or anyone else who is concerned with the pressures of society to have children. They might find this interesting. What are you saying? Should this be defunded? Should this not be allowed? You couldn't be allowed to do a paper like this? Think about the claims you're making if you're someone who is against this field and you are touting this as a reason to be against this field. Furthermore, do you sense a postmodernism problem in that paper? Were those words meaningless to you? No. They had perfectly legitimate meanings, and this paper says exactly what it is, and it is strawmanned by people with an ideological agenda, which is the exact thing James and Peter thought they were proving against.

1:07:17 Thomas: They actually were falling for it themselves. Almost done here. Here's a particularly horrendous straw man. This one is summarized by James as scientific method is sexist. Boy, what a claim. There's no ideological bent behind that straw man summary. So this is clearly, when you say something like that, it's meant to infuriate, again, science dude bros who This is cited by 37 papers, but keep in mind this is from 1995. So, keep that in mind. Most of these were new articles because it's, you know, this has been talked about as a newer problem, a new-ish problem in gender studies. This is from 1995, so it's given it a lot longer to be cited by any random thing here and there. But it's not new, so this isn't part of a new problem. But this paper is interesting.

1:08:04 Thomas: It talks about how the statistical methods of analysis, that it says were a breakthrough, by the way, so it talks about them in a positive light. But But it says when they were developed and kind of discovered, they were used, they sort of always used white men as like the baseline group, and they compare other groups to white men as others, and that's interesting. You know what? That sounds fucking interesting. That sounds like something I would like to know more about. That's an interesting perspective. I'd never thought of that. I mean, really, we do. I mean, I think that's the bias. I think that's white privilege. I think that's a kind of a Western bias to look at someone generally like me, by the way, of my demographic qualities, and say, well, that's the normal person. Now let's look at how these other groups vary from that.

1:08:51 Thomas: Seems interesting to me. Does it say the scientific method is sexist? Not that I saw. I mean, you can read the paper yourself, so ask yourself this. Is that paper nonsense? Should it not be allowed to exist? Two more, second to last, this is titled by James, Curing Erectile Dysfunction Reinforces Hegemonic Masculinity. This one is cited by 136, but it's also from 2000, so it's a bit older, had more time.

Here's a quote: it is argued that by relinquishing the penis's executive position in sex, male bodies might become differently inscribed and coded for diverse pleasures beyond the phallus, penis. So it's saying there's a huge, the point of this paper is that there's a huge pressure, like men who are impotent or men who can't get erections are basically worthless in sex, in the media, in in you know in commercials about medication for it and such and it's saying well maybe if men thought of sex a little differently maybe if they didn't think of the penis is like the thing in sex like it's the captain of sex then maybe they would be able to have diverse pleasures and sex and they wouldn't feel that pressure. That kind of thing is, can you argue with that?

Sure, you could read that paper, see what it says, maybe argue it with it if you want to, maybe you could say, well, I'm not really interested in other pleasures beyond penile pleasure or something, that's for you to do if you want, to otherwise, it's an interesting point. Should, and finally, this is the paper that James touted as the most cited in gender studies, and I think it is. This is cited by 10,210 other papers. To give some perspective, by the way, when we're looking at papers cited by two.

1:10:30 Thomas: It's called Doing Gender, and looks like he didn't write an alarmist description of this one, but in the podcast you just heard, he He said that it talked about gender as an accomplishment, which for some reason to James was really offensive. He said that's absurd, we can't talk about it like that. I don't really see where that is. This paper is available in full. You can read it if you want. I mean, here's a little bit of it. To elaborate our proposal, we suggest at the outset that important but often overlooked distinctions be observed among sex, sex category, and gender. Sex is a determination made through the application of socially agreed upon biological criteria for classifying persons as females or males. The criteria for classification can be genitalia, birth, or chromosomal typing before birth, and they do not necessarily agree with one another, which is interesting, side note.

1:11:20 Thomas: Placement in a sex category is achieved through application of the sex criteria, but in everyday life, categorization is established and sustained by the socially required identificatory displays that proclaim one's membership in one or the other category. In this sense, one's sex category presumes one's sex and stands as a proxy for it in many situations. But sex and sex category Can vary independently, that is, it is possible to claim membership in a sex category even when the sex criteria are lacking. Gender, in contrast, is the activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one's sex category. Gender activities emerge from and bolster claims to membership in a sex category. And finally here, this looks like their thesis statement here.

1:12:06 Thomas: We contend that recognition of the analytical independence of sex, sex category, and gender is essential for understanding the relationships among these elements and the interactional work involved in being, in quotes, "a gendered person" in society. While our primary aim is theoretical, there will be occasion to discuss fruitful directions for empirical research following from the formulation of gender that we propose. Well, again, I'm not an expert, but my guess is that's cited a lot because it sort of lays the groundwork for being trans or being someone who identifies as a different gender than they're assigned at birth. And it lays out that difference pretty easily. I mean, would someone, does anyone want to argue with me that sex, sex category, and gender are three different things that are Apply it in these ways?

1:12:54 Thomas: It seems obvious. Sometimes your sex and sex category can differ and that's just science. Sometimes your genitalia doesn't match the chromosomal typing. That's just science. Is that something you want to argue with? Is that unscientific to say? And furthermore, sometimes people identify as a different gender than the first two things we talked about. That just happens. I mean, is that unscientific? And so it talks about the, when it says we're performing a gender in a way, when it says it's an accomplishment, which James was apparently really offended by, is What do you think? Is that offensive? Is that an idea that should be off limits? Is that something that should be defunded? Does it need to be cleaned up to say, well, there are certain tasks in life, there are certain activities that we view as gendered.

1:13:39 Thomas: We view certain things as very male. I don't know, opening a jar or something or holding a door open or whatever. And people who are male, like me, Are you offended by this? Is this postmodernist garbage? Did you hear anything in that paragraph I read you that was by the way like the almost the full abstract like summary paragraph? Did that sound postmodernist? Because for me, I'm not involved in gender studies. I don't know much about it. I understood every word of it. It wasn't particularly difficult. Was there a postmodern garbage language problem in that paragraph? I just don't think so. I'm not sure what James is seeing there. I'm not sure what you might be seeing there. You can comment if you want, but I think this is... Completely ideologically based. I think James and Peter had an ideological motive that was driven by straw man representations by this new real peer review account.

1:14:55 Thomas: Sort of like how Fox News can put people in a completely different world. If all your information about a field is from a parody account that's straw man's research, then yeah, maybe you'll think the field is nonsense. He also sent me a link to the feminist glaciology paper and he's also tweeted out the talk, and this is going to be a topic for something else, maybe a video or something, because in that talk I saw a brilliant scientist sort of bare her soul in a way and tell us in the end of that that she was scared by how many people sent her harassing messages who misrepresented her paper, who straw-manned it and attacked her for it. And she told us in that video that she was scared, and people like James and people like you all who are sharing this in a, oh, look how ridiculous this is kind of way, are perpetuating.

1:15:42 Thomas: You are perpetuating that abuse by deliberately failing to try to understand what her point was, which is that historically women have not been allowed to study certain things. Just as this has been a theme of a lot of these papers, go watch that video. I might do more on that. I'll put the link. Watch that video. Watch the last five minutes of that video. And if she is someone that you want to laugh at or insult or ridicule, I what to say to you, I think that is horrendous. Think it would be appropriate to say that you have a hatred for women if that is your response after watching the last five minutes. It's powerful. Alright, I know this went really long, but I didn't want to do another episode of it. This could have been Thursday's episode, but I mean, two is enough.

1:16:27 Thomas: I didn't want to do three. But guys, my conclusion is, look at what is happening here. When James came on this show, and when I asked him for his list of links for what supports his claim that gender studies is bunk, he sent me straw man after straw man after straw man that I'm going to post to you, and you can do the research yourself too. Ask who should have been doing that work. Who is it incumbent upon to get it right? Me? Eli? By the way, I did do my best to get it right. I looked into all of it. I represented it as best as I see the truth. Or two people who come in to take down a field that they don't belong to, that they don't know anything about. Wouldn't it be incumbent upon those two gentlemen?

1:17:16 Thomas: To get their shit in order, to do their research, and to actually write a skeptic article that does a meta study of the field and shows where they think it's bunk, where they think it has a problem, so that we could all cite that and say, oh yeah, here, I'll check out this paper, I'll see what it says for myself. Or do you really think it is behavior befitting of an intellectual, of someone who's honest? Of someone who has real intentions and wants to get at the truth, do you really think it's appropriate to do what they did, to make a hoax paper, to essentially pin it on a tree, a meaningless paper, journal that just accepted whatever, that was pay to play? And make conclusions about the entire field of gender studies based on that and using no other information in their article.

1:18:05 Thomas: Not citing more sources, not going through a number of studies and papers in real journals, in real gender studies journals, and concluding and parading the gender studies as a field has a problem. In conclusion, this article was horrible. It was unscientific garbage. It was not well thought out. It's uncritical. It's been accepted and eaten up by a bunch of ideologically motivated men and some women who feel the same who want to take out a field that they know nothing about, and their only true knowledge of is a parody Twitter account. Horrible. Absolutely horrible behavior. I can't believe it. I don't know what to say. I can't believe that I'm getting tone policed on Twitter for fighting back about this nonsense when an entire field is being taken down by intellectually dishonest people who didn't do their actual work, who misrepresent every single one of these papers that I read you are misrepresented in this description.

1:19:05 Thomas: It's an embarrassment. I'm sorry for going on at length. I'm sorry for getting preachy and ranty. This was an embarrassment, though. Please check out the show notes. Evaluate for yourself. That's all I have for today. I know it's way long. Look forward to Thursday. I think there's a lot to talk about in the news that's not related to this gender studies stuff. I'm excited to get back to Trump, guys. I can't wait. Thanks for listening so much. Thanks for supporting those of you who do at patreon.com/seriouspod, where, by the way, you can find a bonus segment interview with Andrew, pretty short, but Andrew had comments about the legal claims made by James and made by me, and he also talked about, he gave his thoughts on the interview, so find that on patreon.com/seriouspod. Other bonus stuff coming at you soon. Thank you for listening and supporting. I'll see you on Thursday.