Prof Wenner, of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, yesterday participated as the organiser of a panel discussion on the hoax, during the World Congress of Sociology of Sport, held at the University of Otago in Dunedin.
The discussion was titled "The Fake Article Hoax and the State of Play in Critical and Qualitative Sociology of Sport".
After the hoaxers submitted 20 papers to academic journals, three were published and another four were also accepted.
Prof Wenner also criticised the extensive "faking" linked to the hoax, including using false author names, fake internet profiles of the authors and fake research findings.
This "malicious" faking had wasted a great deal of time and effort, including by academic "readers", who undertook extensive unpaid voluntary work to assess academic papers before publication.
In an interview, Prof Wenner also took issue with criticism by the three hoaxers of what they had termed "grievance studies" in several fields of sociology, in a bid to justify the faking of the papers.
Prof Wenner said that sociology and other social sciences had always taken a close interest in who held power and power imbalances, including, in earlier times, the lack of voting power for women, and forms of racial discrimination, including slavery.
Earlier efforts to end the slave trade and to gain votes for women had involved legitimate grievances.
Using the term "grievance studies" was "simplistic" and unhelpful, and implied there were no longer any legitimate social grievances, he said.
Other participants in the discussion were Dominic Malcolm of Loughborough University, UK; Kim Toffoletti of Deakin University; Catherine Palmer of the University of Tasmania; Richard Pringle of Monash University, Australia; and Mary McDonald of the Georgia Institute of Technology, US.
More than 220 participants from more than 30 countries are attending the congress.
This is the first time the congress, run by the International Sociology of Sport Association, has been hosted in New Zealand.
