> And your claim was this was "far worse than the replication crisis"... how? Vast economic policy changes versus what, exactly?

"Far worse" does not entail these effects are in industry. I actually meant far worse for our body of knowledge and for academic credibility. Particularly since the US has taken a serious anti-academic pivot in the past 20 years.

> Yes it is - to claim that these academics (who are accused of being postmodern neomarxists) can recruit corporate, capitalist HR departments, but not recruit more students, is inconsistent.

It's not. HR departments are not populated by students, and the claim that they are capitalist is debatable. They were students at one point certainly, but the circumstances and mentalities of every generation of students differs. To claim there's an inconsistency is to claim you know why enrollment in these disciplines might be down (assuming it is), which you don't. And that tells you nothing about the influence of these subjects outside of academia.

> What harm? What harm do you think is specifically proven by this hoax or any other paper? [...] This hoax has nothing to do with the field's "claims"

Right, the hoax highlights the poor methodology common in this field, which is why the claims in this field should be viewed with extreme skepticism.

The results from this field have guided a lot of policy, in government, in industry, and in academia. As but one example, Google has pushed a number of initiatives to improve diversity, initiatives that are logically impossible to implement and that are legally discriminatory (and for which they are now being sued). Harvard too with its admission policies. This pattern has repeated itself numerous times.

> I thought you were making a non-trivial claim that people in academia were debating the scientific method.

Some are, so you've misread me again. Read the article I cited which quotes McLean (thecut.com).

> Awesome, lets discuss all the "dangerous claims" that this academic field is making. [...] but I'm happy to talk about specific claims in specific papers, and compare their acceptance and their magnitude.

No thanks. Not only have I already done this numerous times and am loathe to yet again, it's also against HN rules to divert and prolong discussions in this fashion. We're probably already in violation by going on this long. This will probably be my last post.

> If scientists and presumably, people like yourself, were so sure they'd found scientific knowledge previously, and it "didn't exist", couldn't the same doubt exist for the claims you make today?

Denying facts in favour of fantasy is the only way to justify oppression and dehumanization. If you ask for evidence of any claim, either the evidence actually justifies those claims or it's specious and/or inconclusive, and the people advancing the claim are pushing an agenda rather than following the facts. I have never seen a single instance that did not follow this pattern.

Furthermore, moral victories in society are largely driven by factual advances, by the questioning of existing circumstances and the discovery that things are not what was initially believed. For instance, refuting the divine right of kings, the illegitimacy of slavery, the equality of genders, all of them are hailed as grand moral victories, but the moral progress was achieved because people simply asked, upon what factual basis do we treat these classes of people differently?

In every case, there has been no legitimate basis, and so those distinctions were torn down. Except we're now reaching a point where factual distinctions are themselves being torn down, because science itself is being questioned. Here be dragons.