Chapter 9 - The Hoax and the Humanities

Summary

In this chapter, I want to take a close look at two distinct but related phenomena in the humanities, each of which marks a stark contrast with the natural sciences for reasons that are not altogether clear. The first involves a recent episode in which several deliberately nonsensical articles were published as part of an effort to expose a certain family of humanities disciplines as intellectually hollow. I will argue that the general phenomenon it illustrates does in fact represent a serious problem in the humanities. The second phenomena is the general absence of article retraction in the humanities. Retraction plays an important epistemic role in science. Now, why is the retraction rate in the humanities holding steady at around 0%? Is this cause for celebration, cause for concern, or an insignificant byproduct of the fundamental difference between scientific knowledge and humanistic knowledge?