Optimality Theory Was a Hoax—Prince and Smolensky finally come clean; by SpecGram Wire Services; From Volume CLXVI Number 4, of Speculative Grammarian, March 2013 — At a tearful news conference during the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Allen Prince confessed that Optimality Theory was a hoax. “I just can’t live with the lies any longer,” he said. (Read by Brianne Hughes.)