It only took ten days, but the journal Cogent Social Sciences has finally retracted the hoax paper it published entitled “The conceptual penis as a social construct.”

In retracting the paper, the journal merely stated, “This article has been retracted by the publisher. For more information please see the statement on this article.”

That statement was filled with a lot of excuses and platitudes about “working closely with the academic editorial teams of all our journals to review our processes,” but little apparent recognition that the hoax demonstrated without question that quality of the gender studies field is simply crap. In fact, it appears the goal of their reviews isn’t to question the quality of the academic research, but to establish policies that will prevent another hoax. As far as they are concerned, it is okay to publish this exact same junk, as long as its authors sincerely believe it to be true.