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Animal Ethics Biosafety Human Research Ethics Research Integrity

Can peer review survive social science’s paradigm wars? – Times Higher Education (Martyn Hammersley | July 2022)

Posted by Dr Gary Allen in Research Integrity on September 4, 2022
Keywords: Journal, Peer review, Research integrity, Research results

The Linked Original Item was Posted On July 19, 2022

An hanging sign with the words. "UNDER REVIEW" pending application button or icon.

If authors are no longer required to justify their fundamental assumptions, where does that leave referees, asks Martyn Hammersley

Peer review is essential to the operation of research communities. But what are the conditions that must be met for it to operate? One is surely that there must be some minimum level of agreement about the task of research and how it should be pursued.

In the operation of peer review, we are seeing the fundamental and strident differences  between social median methodologies.  Because the objective of peer is to select and refine the best argument, but the methodological contention is about one philosophy over another. This Times Higher Education piece looks through the issues and the implications they have for the integrity of science.

Yet increasingly, in many areas of the social sciences and humanities, there are fundamental divisions not just about the nature of what is being studied and how to understand it, but even about what the product of research should be. For instance: are human beings, organisations and institutions causal agents operating in the world or are they discursive constructions with nothing lying “outside the text”? Is the aim of research to understand the world or to have “impact” on it, including reducing social inequalities?

Involved here are clashes between fundamental commitments, resulting in the “paradigm wars” whose future Nate Gage famously predicted back in 1989. Is peer review compatible with these conflicts? Let me illustrate the problem.

Recently, in reviewing a paper for a journal, I faced a dilemma. The paper made some interesting points, but my view was that it relied on a range of doubtful empirical, theoretical and political assumptions that led to tendentious interpretations of rather thin data. The authors implied that any questioning of these assumptions amounted to an attack on their intellectual and social identities. But I felt that since many readers would not share them, explicit justification ought to be provided.

Can peer review survive social science’s paradigm wars?
If authors are no longer required to justify their fundamental assumptions, where does that leave referees, asks Martyn Hammersley

Related Reading

The Attack of Zombie Science – Nautilus (Natalia Pasternak, et al | January 2022)

Quality shines when scientists use publishing tactic known as registered reports, study finds – Science (Cathleen O’Grady | June 2021)

The Use and Abuse of Science (Books: Paul Needham | March 2020)

Why did it take so many decades for the behavioral sciences to develop a sense of crisis around methodology and replication? – Stat Columbia (Andrew Gelman and Simine Vazire | April 2021)

Ethical research — the long and bumpy road from shirked to shared – Nature (Sarah Franklin | October 2019)

Where Are the Missing Coauthors? Authorship Practices in Participatory Research (Papers: Daniel Sarna-Wojcicki, et al | 2017)

Research Ethics in Ethnography/Anthropology (Dr Ron Iphofen AcSS)

Social Science Research Ethics for a Globalizing World: Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Books: Keerty Nakray, Margaret Alston, Kerri Whittenbury)

Handbook of Ethics in Quantitative Methodology

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