Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

What happened to Popperian falsification? Publishing neutral and negative findings

What happened to Popperian falsification? Publishing neutral and negative findings Purpose– Current publication practices in the scholarly (International) Business and Management community are overwhelmingly anti-Popperian, which fundamentally frustrates the production of scientific progress. This is the result of at least five related biases: the verification, novelty, normal science, evidence, and market biases. As a result, no one is really interested in replicating anything. In this essay, the author extensively argues what he believes is wrong, why that is so, and what we might do about this. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach– This is an essay, combining a literature review with polemic argumentation. Findings– Only a tiny fraction of published studies involve a replication effort. Moreover, journal authors, editors, reviewers and readers are not interested in seeing nulls and negatives in print. This replication crisis implies that Popper’s critical falsification principle is actually thrown into the scientific community’s dustbin. Behind the façade of all these so-called new discoveries, false positives abound, as do questionable research practices meant to produce all this allegedly cutting-edge and groundbreaking significant findings. If this dismal state of affairs does not change for the good, (International) Business and Management research is ending up in a deadlock. Research limitations/implications– A radical cultural change in the scientific community, including (International) Business and Management, is badly needed. It should be in the community’s DNA to engage in the quest for the “truth” – nothing more, nothing less. Such a change must involve all stakeholders: scholars, editors, reviewers, and students, but also funding agencies, research institutes, university presidents, faculty deans, department chairs, journalists, policymakers, and publishers. In the words of Ioannidis (2012, p. 647): “Safeguarding scientific principles is not something to be done once and for all. It is a challenge that needs to be met successfully on a daily basis both by single scientists and the whole scientific establishment.” Practical implications– Publication practices have to change radically. For instance, editorial policies should dispose of their current overly dominant pro-novelty and pro-positives biases, and explicitly encourage the publication of replication studies, including failed and unsuccessful ones that report null and negative findings. Originality/value– This is an explicit plea to change the way the scientific research community operates, offering a series of concrete recommendations what to do before it is too late. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Cross Cultural & Strategic Management Emerald Publishing

What happened to Popperian falsification? Publishing neutral and negative findings

Download PDF
28 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/what-happened-to-popperian-falsification-publishing-neutral-and-ehNfgHoMgX

References (115)

Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN
2059-5794
DOI
10.1108/CCSM-03-2016-0084
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Purpose– Current publication practices in the scholarly (International) Business and Management community are overwhelmingly anti-Popperian, which fundamentally frustrates the production of scientific progress. This is the result of at least five related biases: the verification, novelty, normal science, evidence, and market biases. As a result, no one is really interested in replicating anything. In this essay, the author extensively argues what he believes is wrong, why that is so, and what we might do about this. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach– This is an essay, combining a literature review with polemic argumentation. Findings– Only a tiny fraction of published studies involve a replication effort. Moreover, journal authors, editors, reviewers and readers are not interested in seeing nulls and negatives in print. This replication crisis implies that Popper’s critical falsification principle is actually thrown into the scientific community’s dustbin. Behind the façade of all these so-called new discoveries, false positives abound, as do questionable research practices meant to produce all this allegedly cutting-edge and groundbreaking significant findings. If this dismal state of affairs does not change for the good, (International) Business and Management research is ending up in a deadlock. Research limitations/implications– A radical cultural change in the scientific community, including (International) Business and Management, is badly needed. It should be in the community’s DNA to engage in the quest for the “truth” – nothing more, nothing less. Such a change must involve all stakeholders: scholars, editors, reviewers, and students, but also funding agencies, research institutes, university presidents, faculty deans, department chairs, journalists, policymakers, and publishers. In the words of Ioannidis (2012, p. 647): “Safeguarding scientific principles is not something to be done once and for all. It is a challenge that needs to be met successfully on a daily basis both by single scientists and the whole scientific establishment.” Practical implications– Publication practices have to change radically. For instance, editorial policies should dispose of their current overly dominant pro-novelty and pro-positives biases, and explicitly encourage the publication of replication studies, including failed and unsuccessful ones that report null and negative findings. Originality/value– This is an explicit plea to change the way the scientific research community operates, offering a series of concrete recommendations what to do before it is too late.

Journal

Cross Cultural & Strategic Management – Emerald Publishing

Published: Aug 1, 2016

There are no references for this article.