English

Alternative forms

• pseudoscholarship

Noun

pseudo-scholarship ‎(countable and uncountable, plural pseudo-scholarships)

1. (uncountable) Any body of publications purported to be scholarly or supported by critical scholarship but which fails to comply with scholarly standards

   [...] if we had possessed much more of the patristic history and literature, our pseudo-scholarship, the natural worship of antiquity, and the spirit of prelatic superstition, would only have used them as so many stronger entrenchments [...] ('Mr. Cooper's "Free Church of Ancient Christendom"', The Monthly Christian spectator, September 1852, p. 518)

   [...] it still remains difficult for university presidents and boards of control to distinguish between pseudoscholarship and real scholarship in the selection of professors (American Medical Association bulletin, 1910, p. 308)

   [...] sincere but uninformed people can be taken in by the pseudo-scholarship of fundamentalist propagandists. (John C. Dwyer, The word was made flesh: an introduction to the theology of the New Testament, Rowman & Littlefield, 1989, p. 16)

   But once we are willing to allow one kind of pseudo-scholarship a foothold, the main rationale for closing the gates to others must logically come from judging the motivation behind them [...] (Scott McConnell, 'When Pretension Reigns Supreme', New York Post, 22 May 1996, reprinted in Alan D. Sokal (ed.), The Sokal hoax: the sham that shook the academy, University of Nebraska Press, 2000, p. 87)

2. (countable) An arrangement that in effect grants a scholarship to a student, without being considered on a par with a real or standard scholarship

   [...] the exceptional close Scholarships would be felt to be something less honourable than the average Scholarship, in fact, as a sort of Pseudo-scholarship. (Report and evidence upon the recommendations of Her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the state of the University of Oxford presented to the Board of Heads of Houses and Proctors, December 1, 1853, Oxford University Press, 1853, p. 430)

   These jobs, which require students to prove financial need, serve as pseudo-scholarships, enabling some students to afford college. (Greg Gottesman, Daniel Baer, College Survival 7th Ed., Peterson's (2004), p. 212.)

Hyponyms

• (publications purported to be scholarly): pseudoscience, pseudohistory, pseudoarchaeology, pseudo-astronomy, pseudo-linguistics, pseudo-grammar, pseudo-criticism, pseudo-philosophy, pseudo-theology

Derived terms

• pseudo-scholarly
• pseudo-scholar