...by anally penetrating themselves with sex toys, and a rewrite of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf in feminist language.

The hoax received a mixed reception within academia. Some academics praised it for exposing flaws that they believed to be widespread among sectors of the humanities and social sciences influenced by postmodernism, critical theory, and identity politics. Others criticised what they saw as the unethical nature of submitting deliberately bogus research; for this reason Boghossian's employer, Portland State University, initiated a misconduct investigation over his involvement in the project. Critics also asserted that the work did not represent a scientific investigation given that the project did not include a control group, further arguing that invalid arguments and poor standards of peer-review were not restricted to "grievance studies" subjects but found across much of academia

I remember standing in some fancy bookstore in Soho skimming Sokal's piece in "Social Text" mag back in 1996 and laughing so loudly at the obvious trolling that I got nasty stares and asked to settle down. That people were still naively falling for similar pranks 20 years later is just sad.