ABSTRACT
One of Barry Barnes's most well known interventions in the debate about the meaning of knowledge is to make a distinction between social kinds and natural kinds. In 1996 Alan Sokal, a physicist, published a paper in the cultural studies journal Social Text which he immediately declared to be a hoax, having no serious content. The obvious consequences for the Bogdanov hoax/non-hoax are roughly the same as for the Sokal hoax. The hoaxer wants the readers to be taken in by the form and thus demonstrate their lack of integrity when it comes to evaluating the content. It is particularly hard to tell the difference between a hoax and a bad paper because both have the same characteristics: appropriate form with content that is poor but not obviously beyond the pale on first reading. The logic of hoaxing remains intriguing and there may be a lesson about the logic, of the peer review system to be drawn out.
