After It Appears in Writing, Don't Say "Teacher, We Didn't Cover This": The Sokal Affair

In 1996, a physics professor pulled a prank on the academic world whose echoes still resonate today. Moreover, this was not a joke told in a conference hall or a light-hearted quip among colleagues. It was a serious-looking academic article, filled with footnotes, adorned with elaborate titles, and published in a respected journal.

The title alone was startling: “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” The author was physicist Alan Sokal from New York University. You can access the article here: from here.

The text, accompanied by a torrent of references ranging from quantum mechanics to chaos theory and from Derrida to Lacan, claimed that physical reality is in fact a social and linguistic construct. Most readers’ inner voice responded:

“I don’t understand… but clearly it’s profound.”

“If It’s Funny, Tell It—Let’s Laugh.”

The real surprise came immediately after publication. Sokal revealed in another journal that the article had been entirely fabricated as a parody. He had deliberately inserted scientific errors, nonsensical deductions, and sentences that sounded impressive but were empty inside.

His goal was simple: If a text appears sufficiently complex, jargon-laden, and ideologically aligned with editors’ worldview, can it be published in an academic journal regardless of whether it makes any sense?

The answer was “yes.”

This admission triggered a minor earthquake in academia. Newspapers turned it into front-page news. Some hailed Sokal as a courageous critic; others branded him an unethical provocateur. But everyone agreed on one thing: There was something deeply funny yet profoundly unsettling going on. Because this prank did not just fool one journal—it exposed certain habits of academic culture.

Isn’t it funny? In an environment where no one dared openly say “I don’t understand,” a meaningless text was mistaken for profundity… Jargon overriding substance… Even the title being more complex than the article itself…

Why did this prank work so easily?

Not because it was funny, but because it was arguably the best joke academia has ever received—it opened the door to a major debate.

Alan Sokal (ResearchGate)

"For the Last Time: Is There Anything You Don’t Understand, Kids?"

When Alan Sokal’s “prank” surfaced, no one thought it would remain just a funny story. But few could have predicted how large it would grow. Suddenly, the issue went beyond a single article and became a symbol of one of the most heated intellectual debates of the 1990s: the Science Wars.

On one side were physicists, mathematicians, and biologists who argued that natural sciences could reveal an objective reality. To them, science, however incomplete or provisional, remained the best method for generating reliable knowledge about the real world. On the other side were postmodern approaches emerging especially from the humanities and cultural studies. These approaches claimed that science too was shaped by social, historical, and ideological contexts; that even the claim to “objectivity” was itself a product of power relations.

Sokal’s article was precisely crafted to appeal to this second camp. He mixed physics concepts with claims leading to political and cultural conclusions, making grand statements linking quantum gravity to patriarchy and structures of power. The journal’s editors interpreted it as “a scientist’s contribution to postmodern critique.”

But as you can guess, they accepted the text not because it was correct, but because it suited their ideological preferences. Let’s be honest.

Those who supported Sokal saw the use of scientific concepts as mere decoration, with no regard for their actual meaning, as a serious intellectual problem. Critics, however, approached the matter from a completely different angle. They accused Sokal of unethical behavior: deliberately deceiving well-intentioned editors and caricaturing an entire intellectual tradition. Some even argued this was an example of “scientists’ arrogance”—an attitude of “we understand, you don’t” toward the humanities.

The debate deepened further. Were postmodern thinkers genuinely misunderstanding science, or was science not as “pure” and “neutral” as it claimed? Sokal and Jean Bricmont’s later book, Fashionable Nonsense, intensified this tension by demonstrating how prominent thinkers misused and arbitrarily applied mathematical and physical concepts.

Despite all the noise, neither side convinced the other. Scientists said: “Look, we exposed nonsense.” Postmodernists replied: “This is a power play; you’re missing the real point.”

In my view, however, there was a more fundamental issue beneath all this philosophical posturing. At the heart of the debate still lay an unanswered, simpler question:

If this article was truly meaningless, why did no one dare say out loud, “I don’t understand it”?

“Let Me Explain Again, Listen Carefully!”

Explaining the Sokal Affair merely as “editors were fooled” oversimplifies the matter. The issue was not a single mistake but deeply embedded habits and reflexes within academic culture.

In academia—especially in theory-heavy fields—there seems to be a common psychology: If you don’t understand a text, the fault is rarely seen as lying in the text itself, but in your own insufficient preparation.

Sokal’s article was precisely written to trigger this feeling. Complex sentences, familiar yet intimidating names, trendy concepts… Readers became more inclined to think: “This is hard for me, so it must be profound.” Who would dare say outright, “I didn’t understand a thing”? To say so risks being perceived as an admission of intellectual inadequacy.

Moreover, every discipline has its own specialized language—this is unavoidable. But the problem arises when jargon ceases to be a tool and becomes an end in itself. The more complex the language, the more “sophisticated” the text is assumed to be.

Sokal’s text was built not on meaning but on effect. Sentences sounded important, but when simplified, they often revealed either weak claims or outright nonsense. In daily life too, we often automatically assume that what is hard to understand must be clever.

Also, the author was not anonymous. Alan Sokal was a professor at New York University with an impressive record. This granted the text immediate credibility. Although academia claims to value critical thinking, in practice, reputation holds immense power. Names, institutions, and titles can override content.

Another dimension was the journal’s own functioning. Social Text had dedicated that issue to the “Science Wars” and was seeking texts critiquing science. Sokal’s article fit perfectly. Moreover, the journal did not follow a rigorous peer-review process. Thus, the article was accepted not only for its content but because it landed at the right time and place.

This reveals one key truth:

Everyone is a bit suspicious, but no one wants to be the first to speak up.

Because saying “the emperor has no clothes” is difficult in any era and on any subject.

“I’ll Stay Quiet—Since You Know So Much, You Explain It Then.”

Today we live in a world where texts are produced and circulated far more rapidly. Sokal’s deception occurred in 1996, when the internet was still in its infancy and academic publishing was dominated by print journals…

What if the same experiment were conducted today?

Exactly the same—likely even easier.

Today’s academic world is faster than ever. The pressure of “publish or perish,” the thousands of journals, the flood of “special issue invitations” into email inboxes, predatory publishers charging fees for publication… Writing and publishing have become far more “pseudo-cheap” and “mass-produced” than before.

Moreover, a new player has entered the game: artificial intelligence.

With just a few correct prompts, we can now generate texts that sound academic, are rich in references, flow smoothly, yet are extremely superficial. Tools we have today can produce Sokal’s parody—once the product of days of labor—in minutes.

If producing meaningless but “impressive-looking” texts is this easy, how will we now distinguish meaning from appearance?

"Those Who Don’t Want to Listen Should Leave—Otherwise I Won’t Write It..."

Editors must work far more diligently, and no one should believe everything they read!

Most importantly, we must have the courage to ask questions when we don’t understand something.

“Could you explain this a bit more?”

“What exactly are you trying to say here?”

“What is this claim based on? Can you provide your source?”

These are not crude or ignorant questions. On the contrary, they are the beginning of intellectual honesty.

Critical thinking must apply not only to opposing views but also to ideas that align with our own beliefs. Automatically assuming a text is profound and true because it matches our ideology is precisely the trap Sokal exposed.

We laughed at this incident at the beginning, but I believe this laughter was also slightly nervous. Because the issue is not merely about a few editors being fooled. The issue is how seriously we take our ability to distinguish meaning from performance.

A physicist getting a meaningless, jargon-filled text published in a respected journal, then saying, “It was a joke…”

It’s hard to imagine a better intellectual joke than this one, if you ask me.