is a mathematician at University College London and Professor Emeritus of Physics at New York University. His hoax article ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity’ (1996) raised issues about failing academic rigour and abuses of scholarship, and was followed by several books on science and postmodern theory, including ‘Intellectual Impostures’ (1998).
Postmodern ideas have gained the status of absolute truths. Relativism, selectively appropriated into the language of both left and right politics, has metamorphosed into dogma. As oversimplification distorts communication, public trust in scientific fact has eroded. Could renewed ideas of objectivity be a way out?