The Beaver would like to offer Dr. Colin Wright three hearty Aarghs! for his comprehensive dismantling of a peer-reviewed paper titled “Trans Data Epistemologies: Transgender Ways of Knowing with Data.”

This unintentional Sokal hoax about the latest new way of knowing was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The “advocacy scientists” who wrote the paper performed “research” at MIT’s notorious Data+Feminism Lab. In their positionality statements they describe themselves as a “trans person with experience as a community organizer, activist, lobbyist, software engineer, and elected person” and a “trans person interested in activism and data with experience that includes working part-time for a university LGBTQ+ office.”

Impressive scientism credentials like these surely demonstrate MIT’s newfound commitment to merit and excellence.

The paper weaponizes a series of anecdotes collected from thirteen interviewees about how they deploy “data activism” as part of the “resistance of being trans.” This centers on a word-salad assault on “datafication.”

“Datafication, and big data cultures more broadly, is (sic) incredibly harmful to trans people. This harm can come from cisnormative values encoded into people-data handling practices.”

One of their pillars of trans data epistemology is that “well-being is more important than accurate data.” Discounting accuracy in favor of truthiness is how “proactive data activists leverage data to promote alternative narratives of the social reality, questioning the truthfulness of other representations, denouncing injustice and advocating for change.”

What kinds of injustice?”

“Testimonial injustice is when a person’s testimony is disbelieved. Hermenutical (sic) injustice occurs when, even if a person is believed, the hearer lacks the framework to understand, often due to the speaker’s marginalized position.”

This would all be uproariously funny if we weren’t in the midst of a national discussion of federal science funding subsequent to the collapse of public trust.