> I don’t get this at all from the authors. My take is that they call out serious flaws in the rigor of how papers are reviewed. I don’t think it’s reasonable to extend that to say the field is worthless.
I think it's rather undeniable that the Authors essay was not a good-faith attempt at criticizing the peer-review process, but an attempt to discredit certain fields that they didn't like, even by their own admission. I mean, the title of the essay alone should make this very clear. Here's some quotes nonetheless:
> We spent that time writing academic papers and publishing them in respected peer-reviewed journals associated with fields of scholarship loosely known as “cultural studies” or “identity studies”
> As a result of this work, we have come to call these fields “grievance studies”
> We undertook this project to study, understand, and expose the reality of grievance studies, which is corrupting academic research
> The biggest difference between us and the scholarship we are studying by emulation is that we know we made things up.
> these fields of study do not continue the important and noble liberal work of the civil rights movements; they corrupt it while trading upon their good names to keep pushing a kind of social snake oil onto a public that keeps getting sicker
[Note also that this essentially an academic way of phrasing the same things you'll hear people like the far-right Stefan Molyneux (on who's show one of the authors has been a guest several times) say.]
Of importance here that it's not the scientific practices that are "corrupting academia" but the fact that these fields exist at all. I'm sure you can find more if you really want to. Compare this to say the "reproducibility in Psychology" study, which unsurprisingly doesn't dedicate half of their text to talking about why the authors think psychology is bad.
Don't be mistaken: The whole thing was an attempt to cash in on the general crisis the scientific process is facing to score some easy political points and not a neutral and constructive attempt at improving the quality of research in the field. Or rather, their proposal at improving the quality would involve getting rid of the fields that they don't personally like.
I think it's rather undeniable that the Authors essay was not a good-faith attempt at criticizing the peer-review process, but an attempt to discredit certain fields that they didn't like, even by their own admission. I mean, the title of the essay alone should make this very clear. Here's some quotes nonetheless:
> We spent that time writing academic papers and publishing them in respected peer-reviewed journals associated with fields of scholarship loosely known as “cultural studies” or “identity studies” > As a result of this work, we have come to call these fields “grievance studies” > We undertook this project to study, understand, and expose the reality of grievance studies, which is corrupting academic research > The biggest difference between us and the scholarship we are studying by emulation is that we know we made things up. > these fields of study do not continue the important and noble liberal work of the civil rights movements; they corrupt it while trading upon their good names to keep pushing a kind of social snake oil onto a public that keeps getting sicker
[Note also that this essentially an academic way of phrasing the same things you'll hear people like the far-right Stefan Molyneux (on who's show one of the authors has been a guest several times) say.]
Of importance here that it's not the scientific practices that are "corrupting academia" but the fact that these fields exist at all. I'm sure you can find more if you really want to. Compare this to say the "reproducibility in Psychology" study, which unsurprisingly doesn't dedicate half of their text to talking about why the authors think psychology is bad.
Don't be mistaken: The whole thing was an attempt to cash in on the general crisis the scientific process is facing to score some easy political points and not a neutral and constructive attempt at improving the quality of research in the field. Or rather, their proposal at improving the quality would involve getting rid of the fields that they don't personally like.