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Quadrant magazine, the local grey brigade fighting the neocon culture wars, has been hoaxed! Yum. The story of the hoax was published today in Australian newsletter and website Crikey.

Keith Windschuttle, the editor of the conservative magazine Quadrant, has been taken in by a hoax intended to show that he will print outrageous propositions.

This month’s edition of Quadrant contains a hoax article purporting to be by “Sharon Gould”, a Brisbane based New York biotechnologist.

But in the tradition of Ern Malley – the famous literary hoax perpetrated by Quadrant’s first editor, James McAuley – the Sharon Gould persona is entirely fictitious and the article is studded with false science, logical leaps, outrageous claims and a mixture of genuine and bogus footnotes.

In accepting the article, Keith Windschuttle said in an email to “Sharon Gould”:

I really like the article. You bring together some very important considerations about scientific method, the media, politics and morality that I know our readers would find illuminating.

“Gould’s” article, which is blurbed on the front cover of Quadrant and reproduced online, (subscribers only) argues for the insertion of human genes in to food crops, insects and livestock. [...]

Windschuttle asked for some changes, which involved cutting a lengthy explanation of the Sokal hoax from the first paragraphs – which the hoaxer had intended as a clue.

The hoaxer, thankfully, has kept a public diary of the experience. (It was taken offline recently, but is now being mirrored by Crikey.)

Margaret Simons has printed more detail on her media blog. As she writes,

This is a good story, in journalistic terms. Not earth shattering, not life and death, but within intellectual Australia a significant and serious piece of mockery.

Quadrant is a significant part of our intellectual life, with several claims to an important history and present. [...] Keith Windschuttle is a significant person and public figure.

The sting of this hoax as I understand it is to establish that despite its attacks on post-modern slackness, and despite Windschuttle’s nitpicking of other people’s research, despite the fulminating against academic slackness from the right, it is possible for Quadrant and Windschuttle to publish pseudo-scientific nonsense, so long as it appears to fit in with their ideological view.

For those outside Quadrant's small circle, Simons provides a nice summary of the magazine's place in Australian life -- as explained by former conservative prime minister John Howard.

Quadrant is an historically important conservative magazine, praised by John Howard when he was Prime Minister as his “favourite” magazine and as a forum for "fine scholarship with a sceptical, questioning eye for cant, hypocrisy and moral vanity" and a "lonely counterpoint to stultifying orthodoxies and dangerous utopias that at times have gripped the Western 'intelligentsia".” Howard said Quadrant was: "Australia's home to all that is worth preserving in the Western cultural tradition". Howard described Windschuttle’s articles on Aboriginal history as particularly close to his heart.

[Windschuttle, too, is not above using retro, gay-baiting euphemisms: "Windshcuttle replaced the controversial Paddy McGuiness as editor of Quadrant early last year. When his appointment was announced, Windschuttle was quoted as saying that he would campaign against decadence in the arts." Decadence!]

The debate about the importance -- or not -- of the hoax will continue over coming days. Windschuttle has responded. Simons is blogging regularly. And the Australian broadsheets are all knocking up stories for tomorrow's papers.

For those aware of Windschuttle's form, the hoax has a delicious flavour to it.

Keith Windschuttle is a leading cultural warrior. In recent years he has accused senior historians of falsifying and inventing the degree of violence against Aborigines. He has also accused academic historians of exaggerating the racism involved in the White Australia policy.

He notoriously went about searching through the footnotes of previous histories.

The nub of the Sharon Gould hoax is a play on Windschuttle and Quadrant’s advocacy of empirical research as being divorced from social and political consequences, and therefore beyond question.

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And nice to see that George W. Bush is in the mood for a jolly old hoax too, with news that he is awarding beloved ex-PM John W. Howard the "freedom medal". This is a hoax, yes?