Meeting Information:
- Date: January 31, 2024 (Wednesday)
- Time: 7:00PM to 8:30PM (PST)
- Location: Online via Zoom.
RSVP at the link below and we will send you the Zoom meeting link on the day before the meeting.
"Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
The FAIR LA Book Club will return in January 2024 with a discussion of Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay's shocking 2022 exposé Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody. After infamously submitting fake research papers to peer-reviewed scientific journals—and getting some of them published—the authors brought scrutiny and embarrassment to an academic complex willing to publish anything that appeared to be in line with its ideologies and political aims, regardless of how sound the science was. Tracing this trend to its origins in French post-modernism, Pluckrose and Lindsay discuss how an illiberal and anti-Enlightenment approach to science as "ought to be" rather than "is" threatens not only democracy but modern life itself.
Links to Get the Book:
Links About the Book:
In preparation for our book club discussion, check out the following links:
- The Grievance Studies Affair – Documentary by Michael Nanya tracing the authors’ papers submission hoax. View the short segment, or the full playlist here. (YouTube – 7m)
- Intercollegiate Studies Institute – Webinar in which Pluckrose and Lindsay describe their findings. (YouTube – 1h 32m)
- New Discourses – In his podcast, Lindsay describes the book and responds to criticisms. (YouTube – 1h 2m)
- Think, Inc. – Interview of Pluckrose by Claire Lehmann. (YouTube – 1h 12m)
- The Atlantic – “What an Audacious Hoax Reveals About Academia” article by Yascha Mounk (12 min read)
Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay have Substacks you can subscribe to at:
“New Discourses” is also a website and YouTube channel.