In 2013, Sokal co-authored a paper with Nicholas Brown and Harris Friedman, rejecting the Losada Line, a concept popular in positive psychology. Named after its proposer, Marcial Losada, it refers to a critical range for an individual's ratio of positive to negative emotions, outside of which the individual will tend to have poorer life and occupational outcomes.[2] This concept of a critical positivity ratio was highly cited and popularised by psychologists such as Barbara Fredrickson. The trio's paper, published in American Psychologist, contended that the ratio was based on faulty mathematical reasoning and therefore invalid.[3]
In 1996, Sokal was curious to see whether the then-non-peer-reviewed postmoderncultural studies journal Social Text (published by Duke University Press) would publish a submission which "flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions". Sokal submitted a grand-sounding but completely nonsensical paper titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity."[4][5]
After holding the article back from earlier issues because of Sokal's refusal to consider revisions, the staff published it in the "Science Wars" issue as a relevant contribution.[6] Soon thereafter, Sokal then revealed that the article was a hoax in the journal Lingua Franca,[7] arguing that the left and social science would be better served by intellectual underpinnings based on reason. The affair was front-page news in The New York Times on May 18, 1996. Sokal responded to leftist and postmodernist criticism of the deception by asserting that he was himself a leftist, and that his motivation was to "defend the Left from a trendy segment of itself".
Sokal followed up in 1997 by co-authoring the book Impostures Intellectuelles with physicist and philosopher of science Jean Bricmont (published in English, a year later, as Fashionable Nonsense). The book accuses some social sciences academics of using scientific and mathematical terms incorrectly and criticizes proponents of the "strong program" of the sociology of science for denying the value of truth. The book had contrasted reviews, with some lauding the effort,[8] and some more reserved.[9][10]
In 2008, Sokal revisited the Sokal affair and its implications in Beyond the Hoax.
^
R. Fernandez, J. Froehlich, A. D. Sokal,
"Random Walks, Critical Phenomena, and Triviality
in Quantum Field Theory".
Springer (1992) ISBN0-387-54358-9
^Brown N. J. L.; Sokal A. D.; Friedman H. L. (2013). "The Complex Dynamics of Wishful Thinking: The Critical Positivity Ratio". American Psychologist. 68 (9): 801–813. arXiv:1307.7006. doi:10.1037/a0032850. PMID23855896. S2CID644769.
^Sokal A. (1996). "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". Social Text. 46/47 (46/47): 217–252. doi:10.2307/466856. JSTOR466856.