I. The Most Famous Academic Joke of the Twentieth Century In the spring of 1996, a physicist succeeded in doing something that generations of philosophers, historians, and scientists had failed to accomplish. Without publishing a new theory, discovering a new particle, or producing a single experimental result, Alan Sokal triggered one of the most enduring intellectual controversies of the late twentieth century. The article at the centre of the affair bore an imposing title:

The so-called Barbacid affair, which emerged in Spain during the spring of 2026, offers a remarkable case study in the contemporary relationship between scientific authority, public expectation, biomedical entrepreneurship, and media communication. At the centre of the controversy lies a study on pancreatic cancer published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), initially celebrated as a potentially revolutionary breakthrough and later retracted owing

Universities and research funding agencies are supposed to recognize evidence. That is their profession. Or at least, that is what they claim when they cash in student tuition and millions in public research funds. For several years, however, the University of Zurich (UZH) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) have devoted an extraordinary amount of bureaucratic energy, committee hours, and institutional self-righteousness to a scandal that did not exist. Meanwhile

Si diceva in altro contributo: Dante è un’opinione! Col punto esclamativo. Lo affermo con forza. E per fortuna in questo mi aiutano i dantisti più autorevoli. Roberto Mercuri. Commento al Paradiso. Edizione Einaudi. Canto X. Pag. 122. “La figura di Sigieri, che attinse a livelli di riflessione proibiti a qualsiasi uomo («a considerar fu più che viro» v. 132), e che fu modello di ricerca della verità («veri» v. 138), allude a Ulisse che invita i compagni alla riflessione (

Les universités aiment parler de “communauté scientifique”. Expression charmante. Elle évoque des bibliothèques silencieuses, des esprits rigoureux, des débats honnêtes et quelques vieux professeurs encore capables de lire un livre jusqu’à la dernière page. La réalité est souvent moins poétique. Belfagor ouvrira prochainement une section consacrée aux véritables scandales académiques. Pas les querelles narcissiques de réseaux sociaux. Pas les “polémiques” fabriquées pour vend

La matematica non è un’opinione. Dante lo è. E qua non stiamo parlando tanto di interpretazione. Non si tratta, ad esempio, di intercettare chi sia colui che fece “il gran rifiuto”: Celestino, Esaù, Pilato, o forse qualcuno che ancora non abbiamo avuto voglia di individuare; non stiamo parlando di cruces, veltri, cinquecento dieci e cinque e compagnia cantante. No, qua si tratta che Dante scrive una cosa e noi ne capiamo un’altra. Aldo Cazzullo, a pag. 34 del suo libro su

"È la prima volta... O almeno una delle poche volte in cui in Italia si può verificare, a distanza di 10 anni, la puntuale realizzazione di ciò che era stato annunciato 10 anni prima. (...) 10 anni fa, il 18 gennaio del 2010, fu annunciato un piano editoriale, in 7 volumi e 15 tomi, che è stato puntualmente rispettato (...)." Così Gianni Letta, arcidiavolo ad honorem, il 20 luglio 2021, alle ore 13,00, nella Sala Polifunzionale della Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri. L

Gaspard Koenig © AFP Koenig sets out to write a novel on contemporary ecology and ends up with something that just fits the current mood—a book that claims to think, but really just circulates familiar ideas everyone already knows. Honestly, the starting point sounds pretty solid. You get two agronomy students, Kevin and Arthur, each heading down totally different paths to rethink our relationship with the earth: one bets on the market, the other goes all-in on radical cultiv

Giorgio Agamben © Andreas Solaro/​AFP A book like this shows up when an author starts thinking their signature style is enough, that their name can stand in for real substance. Self-Portrait in the Studio tries to be a self-portrait without directly showing the self—it pieces together objects, images, names, and passing encounters. If you know Agamben’s work, you know the move: fragments lined up so that meaning kind of sparks between them. He sticks with the same structure h

Byung-Chul Han Photo credits: Album/Alamy A familiar complaint keeps circulating: the book asserts, simplifies, refuses the long argument. The complaint misses the method. Han does not aim at a treatise. He works by reduction. He removes connective tissue until a structure appears. The starting point is widely sensed and rarely clarified: something has shifted in how stories operate under platform conditions. Commentary often repeats a formula—content displaces narrative, per

Belfagor is not a magazine in the conventional sense. It does not exist to circulate visibility, nor to reinforce reputations already secured elsewhere. Its function is diagnostic. Each text, exhibition, performance, or academic production that enters this space is treated as an object of analysis. The question is simple: does it withstand scrutiny when removed from institutional protection, rhetorical inflation, and reputational inertia? The premise is that contemporary cult