In fact, he found even more examples of scientific illiteracy, some of them even worse. It would be so boring to refute them, Sokal said. I picked the silliest quotes from the most prominent people, and I made up an argument for how they were linked together. They are disconcerted, of course, and for reasons that transcend their private embarrassment at being taken in. Sokal's successful spoof calls into question the intellectual standards of the whole field.
Taxpayers pick up a big chunk of the bill for public universities.
Many of those classes are being taught, it appears, by professors who deny the distinction between truth and falsity and consequently can't distinguish double-talk from rational argument. Maybe some of the junior professors and the graduate students do know what they're hearing is nonsense, but think it would be harmful to their careers to speak out. Living with such deception, possibly for a lifetime, is profoundly corrupting. Honest people just get out, leaving the field to those who don't mind deception or don't recognize it. It's hard to say which is worse.