To muddy the waters of this conversation some more, let me introduce a
sociologist who, umm, fooled physicists into thinking he was an expert on
gravitational waves. Prof. Harry Collins of Cardiff University also
participated in Turing's test-like experiments where 'real' physicists posed
questions in the field to him and another 'real' physicist and ended up
thinking Collins was the Real McCoy.
An somewhat academic description of his experiments is here:
http://www.dpu.dk/site.aspx?p=8649&newsid1=4678
Despite what seems like a twist in the tale, Collins is essentially proving the
same thing that Sokal did - if you can talk the talk, no one considers that
perhaps you can't walk the walk. Linguistic proficiency in a domain of
knowledge often passes as 'expertise'.
- Pavithra
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