[pervycreeper]

I've noticed a lot of hair-splitting in these comments over whether this was a failure of peer review, whether to call the papers, considered as specimens of scholarship in their appropriate fields, "fraudulent" rather than "bad", or whether the number of hours they actually logged at the dog park is a relevant concern. All of this is quite besides the point. The researchers passed a version of the Turing Test among the reviewers of their papers. All that we need from that point is an acknowledgement of the absurdity and falseness of the papers themselves. This may not be easily forthcoming, though. One of the reviewers of Social Text took the position, in the wake of Sokal's hoax, that his paper constituted good scholarship, despite the stated intentions of its author. Also confer with Poe's Law. However, when we admit this as a possible response, we are in the territory of radical relativism, with no way to adjudicate between the claims of these scholars and their critics, and for that matter, those of religious fanatics, mentally ill delusional people, confidence scammers, or indeed anybody at all. This is a position which seems, at least, to be somewhat at odds with the fundamental scholarly enterprise. At its heart, one has to cross the pons arsinorum of admitting that, yes, the papers are indeed absurd nonsense. At this point, it seems impossible to convince some people to take this step.

If the critics's objections could be distilled into something with a semblance of validity and germaneness, then it would be that the researchers's methods were too unfocused. But had they taken a narrower approach, the response could just have been to rationalize and ignore. Fight fire with fire (being generality, in this case).