Sociological Methods &Research, Ahead of Print.
In 2018, Lindsay, Pluckrose, and Boghossian published four “hoax” articles within a number of disciplines that rely on critical theory (e.g., gender studies, feminism). When revealing the project, the authors argued that they wanted to expose these fields as being primarily motivated by ideology and social justice rather than knowledge generation. Their method tested the hypothesis that editors and reviewers will support papers that advocate “ludicrous” ideas including “fat bodybuilding.” In the pages of this journal, I presented a critique of their procedure, and the authors have provided a commentary on my article. After discussing the issue of whether their project was a hoax or not, I will argue that the crux of the matter is whether the papers were ludicrous/absurd. I will show how the authors made a fundamental error in their method; they failed to assess whether their ideas were indeed ludicrous/absurd.