There's a lot of crap in postmodernism, probably more than in other disciplines, because it recognizes every framework of inquiry as contingent, and this can be abused to excuse sloppy inquiry. But the fact is, there's crap in every discipline. Have you seen the CS paper generator[1]? Have you read "Genetic evidence for complex speciation of humans and chimpanzees"[2]?
Sokal et al. acted in bad faith by cherry-picking the worst instances of postmodernist discourse and setting up postmodernism as a monolithic entity universally opposed to the values of scientific inquiry. I Love To You[3] is an example of a book written by a post-modernist (one of the ones Sokal et al. made fun of, incidentally) without any obvious obfuscation. I also enjoyed the interview with her, "Thinking life as relation,"[4] although it's a bit less accessible.
Just to take on [1], the difference between computer science papers and the postmodern papers that involve physics is that while both may seem unintelligible to someone unskilled in the field, real computer science papers actually mean something if you know the terminology. Whenever postmodernists venture into areas where scientists can competently evaluate what they're talking about, the verdict is that they spew absolute rubbish, so it should make us think hard about whether any of the other stuff makes any more sense than it appears to.
It's not proof that the whole field is garbage by any means, but it is at least clear evidence that a lot of respected names in the field are publishing crap that they provably don't understand. That's really not a good sign - there may be crap published in fields like physics, but it's not coming from the Feynmans, it's coming from the relative unknowns.
There are two aspects to this. Firstly, postmodernism hardly concerns itself with venturing into scientific arenas at all. The endeavors which Sokal et al. deride are not representative of postmodernism as a whole.
Secondly, while I haven't read the papers from which Sokal et al. take their examples, and don't know what they were about, I am certain that they're not trying to contribute to scientific knowledge in any conventional sense. I gather from a friend who studies this stuff that Irigaray was playing with the language of scientific discourse in some way. I haven't looked into it further. Some of the stuff Sokal derides certainly deserves it. One of his examples is where Irigaray's work is used to justify sloppy thinking about feminism in science education. That is definitely problematic and deserves to be dismissed out of hand. But generally speaking, Sokal picked out these quotes without clearly explaining their context and intent, and that seems problematic, too.
Just curious - what's the problem with [2]? I only skimmed it, and I see that there is some controversy, but it seems pretty harsh to lump it together with [1]...
It tries to draw conclusions about the relative divergence times of different genes based on degrees of sequence similarity. This evidence is extremely weak, as there are much more likely explanations for the observed patterns of sequence variation, such as a shift in the selection pressure on a gene down the chimp/human lineage, for instance. Despite this weakness, they chose to highlight the sensational conclusion that human and chimp ancestors must have swapped genes through mating long after the presumed speciation time. This was irresponsible, because it caused a widespread public sensation when the paper came out.
it seems pretty harsh to lump it together with [1]...
I'm not lumping them together. The common characteristic is that they're both garbage. The conclusion of [2] is a subtler form of it but not to an evolutionary scientist: the problem with it was immediately obvious to me and many others as soon as it came out. And it's a more serious corruption of scientific discourse because it's a Nature article. The data the analysis was based on has merit, though.
I'll jump in re [2] with, I guess, a sociology of science comment. You seem to have very strong feelings about this paper, for some reason, but accusing the authors of, basically, fraud (i.e. publishing what is an obvious garbage to an expert) is way too harsh. Peer review cannot catch a deliberate falsification of data, but a BS interpretation (especially an "obviously" BS one) will be dealt with mercilessly. You can try and argue that the senior author on that particular paper has enough clout to bend the editors of Nature, but I don't see what would he gain from that. So my guess is that you take a strong position on this paper because it contradicts some favorite idea of yours, but the opposite view is not "obviously" wrong.
Sokal et al. acted in bad faith by cherry-picking the worst instances of postmodernist discourse and setting up postmodernism as a monolithic entity universally opposed to the values of scientific inquiry. I Love To You[3] is an example of a book written by a post-modernist (one of the ones Sokal et al. made fun of, incidentally) without any obvious obfuscation. I also enjoyed the interview with her, "Thinking life as relation,"[4] although it's a bit less accessible.
[1]http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
[2]http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7097/full/nature0...
[3]http://books.google.com/books?id=-6fSONDCgW4C&printsec=f...
[4]http://www.springerlink.com/content/g447683933t14555/?p=6bff...