A few years ago a team of researchers submitted a series of bogus academic papers to academic journals in cultural, queer, race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies to determine if they’d pass peer review and be accepted for publication.

Here's a thread about how that went

Several of the fake research papers were accepted for publication.

The Fat Studies journal published a hoax paper that argued the term bodybuilding was exclusionary and should be replaced with “fat bodybuilding, as a fat-inclusive politicized performance.”

One reviewer said, “I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article, and believe it has an important contribution to make to the field and this journal.”

Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism” was accepted for publication by Affilia—a feminist journal for social workers.

The paper consisted in part of a rewritten passage from “Mein Kampf.”

Two other hoax papers were published, including “Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks.”

This paper’s subject was dog-on-dog rape.

The dog-rape paper eventually forced the authors to prematurely “out” themselves—because a Wall Street Journal writer had figured out what they were doing.

But they were still wildly successful getting papers approved.

Some papers accepted for publication advocated training men like dogs and punishing white male college students for historical slavery by asking them to sit in silence on the floor in chains during class and to be expected to learn from the discomfort.

Other papers celebrated morbid obesity as a healthy life choice and advocated treating privately conducted masturbation as a form of sexual violence against women.

Typically, academic journal editors send submitted papers out to referees for review.

In recommending acceptance for publication, many reviewers gave these papers glowing praise.

You might be thinking “so what?”

Here’s why this matters:

Political scientist Zach Goldberg ran certain grievance studies concepts through @LexisNexis to see how often they appeared in our press over the years.

He found huge increases in the use of “white privilege,” “unconscious bias,” “critical race theory”, and “whiteness.”

This is what is now being taught to college students—many of whom become school teachers who go on to “teach” this to the next generation of children.

The bogus papers were approved because they promoted the journal editors’ intersectional/postmodern leftist vision of the world.

Which just proves the problem of low academic standards.

Scholarship is no longer based upon finding truth, but upon attending to social grievances.

Grievance scholars bully students, administrators, and other departments into adhering to their worldview.

But worldview they promote is neither scientific nor rigorous.

How do YOU think we can reverse this dangerous trend and restore academic?