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Peter Boghossian
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| Born | (1966-07-25) July 25, 1966 (age 57) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Portland State University |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | New Atheism[1] |
| Institutions | Portland State University |
Main interests | Atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, Socratic method |
Notable ideas | Socratic pedagogy |
| Website | peterboghossian |
Peter Gregory Boghossian (/bəˈɡoʊziən/; born July 25, 1966)[2] is an American philosopher. He is an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University. Boghossian's areas of academic focus include atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, and the Socratic method. He is the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists, released in 2013. Boghossian is known for a "grievance studies" hoax[3] with collaborators James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, in which the collaborators published several hoax or insincere papers in academic journals, as part of their criticism of gender studies and other fields, which they has termed "grievance studies". Portland State University initiated a research misconduct investigation of him in 2018.
Boghossian's thesis looks at the use with prison inmates of the Socratic method for critical thinking and moral reasoning with the intention to decrease ongoing criminal behavior.[4] The research was funded by the State of Oregon. Boghossian was Chairman of the Prison Advisory Committee for the Columbia River Correctional Institution and he is currently a fellow at the Center for Prison Reform.[5] Boghossian is employed as an untenured[6] assistant professor at Portland State University.[7]
As part of his ongoing interest in Prison Reform, Portland State University entered into a partnership with the Columbia River Correctional Institution in 2009 to address the needs of inmates releasing into the community. Details of this partnership have been elaborated in an article titled Prisons, Community Partnerships, and Academia: Sustainable Programs and Community Need.[8]
His primary interests are critical thinking, philosophy of education, and moral reasoning. Boghossian is a speaker for the Center for Inquiry, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and the Secular Student Alliance. He has been nominated as a member of the Global Secular Council.[9]
Boghossian is the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists.[10]
Boghossian has stated that he wants to be "the type of person who is willing to revise his beliefs, maybe I want to be the type of person who is inquisitive, trustful of reason and treats people well."[11]
Boghossian has called all faith-based beliefs "delusions."[12] In a 2015 interview with Dave Rubin, Boghossian described himself as a classical liberal who has never voted for a Republican candidate, but is "not a fan" of the Democrats. He stated that any of the Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential election "would be an unmitigated disaster."[11]
According to him, "the regressive left have taken over academia."[11] He has repeatedly stated that cultural relativism and egalitarianism are contradictory values.[11][13][14]
Richard Dawkins stated that "Boghossian's techniques of friendly persuasion are not mine, and maybe I’d be more effective if they were. They are undoubtedly very persuasive—and very much needed."[15]
In 2017, Boghossian and his colleague James Lindsay published a hoax paper in the pay-to-publish platform Cogent Social Sciences. They initially submitted the paper to Norma, where it was rejected, and then submitted it to Cogent Social Sciences, a broad-scope Taylor & Francis pay-to-publish platform that publishes papers "without discrimination" after a light review process, and where it was accepted. The Cogent OA platform is advertised by the publisher Taylor & Francis in automated replies sent to authors who have had their papers rejected by normal journals.[16] The editors of Norma said they thought the article was "nonsense" and "drivel" and that they had rejected it outright, and that they were shocked that it had been published elsewhere, and that they had nothing to do with Cogent OA or any recommendation to publish the paper there.[16][17]
The paper, later revealed as a hoax in Skeptic magazine, intended to highlight a couple of problems: firstly, the "echo-chamber" of morally driven postmodernist social sciences and, secondly, the problem of "lax standards" with pay-to-publish journals.[18] The journal later retracted the paper.[19]
Steven Pinker tweeted about it to his followers,[20] but later linked to a Salon article, saying that the "hoax missed the mark".[21] Others, such as the science communicator Yvette d'Entremont, pointed out that similar hoaxes involving randomly-generated scientific papers have been conducted many times before in pay-to-publish, peer-review scientific journals, yet no one has concluded that these papers undercut science; rather, they merely reveal the problems associated with pay-to-publish platforms.[22] Once the extent of the hoax had been revealed by its authors, Pinker tweeted a link to a Quillette article in which several academics critiqued the societal and academic practices that allow for such hoaxes to occur.[23]
Norma editors Lucas Gottzén, Ulf Mellström, Marinette Grimbeek, Jeff Hearn, Raewyn Connell, and Ann-Dorte Christensen accused the authors of "immoral bogus behaviour" and wrote that "on investigating the activity of the authors, we note that they appear to regularly retweet quotations from authors and studies taken out of context, as if to discredit them. This behaviour says a lot about the authors but nothing about Gender Studies."[17]
The Grievance Studies affair (also referred to as the "Sokal Squared" scandal by the news media) was an academic hoax perpetrated by Boghossian, James A. Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose on a series of academic fields which they termed “grievance studies”, a sub-category of race, gender, fat and sexuality studies in which they believed poor science was undermining the fields.[24][25]
Beginning in August 2017, the trio wrote 20 hoax papers, submitting them to peer-reviewed journals under a variety of pseudonyms, as well as the name of their friend Richard Baldwin, a professor emeritus at Florida’s Gulf Coast State College and friend of Boghossian. The project was halted early after one of the papers in the feminist geography journal Gender, Place and Culture was criticized on social media, and then its authenticity questioned on Campus Reform.[26]
After this, the trio revealed the full extent of their work in a viral YouTube video created and released by documentary filmmaker Mike Nayna, alongside an investigation by The Wall Street Journal.[27][28] By the time of the revelation seven of their 20 papers had been accepted, four had been published, one had won an award, and three were in the final stages of revision before formal acceptance.[29] The documentary did not disclose that Boghossian fabricated data to support one of the papers.[30]
The papers made bizarre recommendations including chaining up children and keeping men on leashes. Another paper was accepted by leading feminist social work journal Affilia and added up-to-date jargon into passages lifted from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.[30]
The studies were variously praised by academic reviewers as “a rich and exciting contribution to the study of ... the intersection between masculinity and anality”, “excellent and very timely” and — in the case of feminist Mein Kampf — offering “important dialogue for social workers and feminist scholars”.[31][32]
The project drew both praise and criticism, with author and Harvard lecturer Yascha Monk dubbing it 'Sokal squared' in reference to the famous Sokal Affair hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal and said "The result is hilarious and delightful. It also showcases a serious problem with big parts of academia." Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker said the project posed the question "is there any idea so outlandish that it won’t be published in a Critical/PoMo/Identity/‘Theory’ journal?"[33] Daniel Engber of Slate criticised the project, saying "one could have run this sting on almost any empirical discipline and returned the same result."[34] Joel P. Christensen and Matthew A. Sears said it was "the academic equivalent of the fraudulent hit pieces on Planned Parenthood" produced in 2015.[35] Carl T. Bergstrom claimed "the hoaxers appear woefully naïve about how the [peer review] system actually works."[36]
In 2018, Boghossian's employer, Portland State University, initiated a research misconduct inquiry relating to his hoax papers. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education the institutional review board has concluded that Boghossian violated the ethical guidelines, while the university is "considering a further charge that he had falsified data".[37][38][39][40][41][42][43]
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins suggested that the investigation could be politically-motivated. "If the members of your committee of inquiry object to the very idea of satire as a form of creative expression, they should come out honestly and say so. But to pretend that this is a matter of publishing false data is so obviously ridiculous that one cannot help suspecting an ulterior motive."[44]
{{cite thesis}}: Unknown parameter |displayauthors= ignored (|display-authors= suggested) (help)...a third paper, published in a journal of feminist social work and titled "Our Struggle Is My Struggle," simply scattered some up-to-date jargon into passages lifted from Hitler's "Mein Kampf...."They set out to write 20 papers that started with "politically fashionable conclusions," which they worked backward to support by aping the relevant fields' methods and arguments, and sometimes inventing data.
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