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SF Writers Sting Supposedly Traditional Publisher

Posted by timothy on from the snobby-neighbor-gets-the-eggs dept.

deeptrace writes "A group of SF writers all submitted purposely awful stories to a publisher that purported to publish only selected high quality works. They created the worst story they could come up with, and it was accepted for publication." Their press release is pretty funny -- and if you'd like a sample of their insane prose, it's available through the book's Lulu site. (Where, Yes, you could also buy the whole thing.)

3 of 474 comments (clear)

  1. No surprise here. by SpaceCadetTrav · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How do you think stories get published on Slashdot?

    --
    Life in Orange County
  2. Re:old news by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This news is at least 2 or 3 days old, what's wrong with /. lately???

    The same thing that's been wrong for years: people who don't understand that something that happened a few days ago - even a few weeks ago - is still news.

    Great, you heard about it days ago, doubtless you monitor all sorts of websites and cable news channels 24/7 and know everything before the rest of us. Congratulations, you win. But those of us who occasionally turn away from the various glass teats appreciate hearing about things that may have happened more than five minutes ago.

    --
    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
    You cannot wash away blood with blood
  3. Nice spin. by rjh · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Sokal, through deliberate fraud...
    Such as writing a paper that he knew was bogus, in order to see whether or not Social Text would publish it?
    and playing on his legitimate reputation within physics, got the Social Text editors to publish an article that they themselves did not think was of high quality.
    The very fact he was able to do that at all is strong evidence that the Social Text editors are incompetent.

    I'm a graduate student, the lowest rung of professional academic, in a hard discipline. Before I submit a paper anywhere, I submit preprints to experts within whatever field I'm writing about. I do this because I know the journals will do the exact same thing, and it's far better on my reputation if my reviewers find them than if the journal finds them. I know that it doesn't matter if my name is Alan Matheson Turing or Paul Erdoes--whatever I or anyone else submits goes through a formal vetting process which involves having experts pore over my paper with a magnifying glass.

    The Sokal Hoax had glaring errors, errors so large that a college senior in mathematics, economics or physics could have spotted them--not only spotted them, but conclusively proven them to be false.

    Social Text didn't catch this. Does it really matter if they thought the paper was of poor quality? They published it, and by publishing it put their imprimatur on it. "Here," they said to the academic world, "read this, we think it's worth your time."

    Social Text was right. It was worth my time, in that it demonstrated to me precisely why I'm going for a Ph.D. in a discipline where rigor and peer review actually mean something.