Missing in Action?

As we come to the end of 2011, there is a glaring lack of response to this blog from the research-active academic community.  I anticipated that one of three primary types of reactions might come from those who publish in the GASSSPP literature: (1) you’re simply wrong, statistically incompetent, and your incorrect conclusions about statistical significance demonstrate it; (2) I don’t believe you, since nearly the entire business-school literature is produced following GASSSPP practices, and this many scholars can’t be wrong; or (3) you’re right—what can be done to correct this state of affairs?

The first reaction would be totally incorrect itself, as the many references in this blog show.  The second, however, might be plausible for the simple reason that the majority of b-school journal articles follow the GASSSPP and are peer-reviewed; but again, the references strongly contradict that belief.  If there were genuine interest in doing science, one would hope for lots of the third type of response.

But what has come from the community of scholars has been absolute, dead silence.  I had expected outrage from at least a few vocal defenders of b-school journal research, but have received nothing.  Anyone who reads anything in the Academy of Management journals on the long-standing question of why the real world ignores scholarly management research has to be aware of the underlying conviction that what we do in the journals is the really good, scientific stuff, actually so good that we are close to being able to prescribe better practice from it if only practitioners would listen.  So when a blog that directly challenges that belief is published for all the world to see, why is there no reaction?

Ah, perhaps none of them have seen it, one could suggest.  Not so—I’ve personally notified a number of well-known scholars in the field and sent the URL for this blog.  They know who they are.  A few wrote personal notes to offer support for efforts to reform the field, but for the large majority, the only sound has been a deafening silence.  Whatever view they may hold of the contents of this blog and the state of our research, the response to unambiguous evidence that the GASSSPP is a fatally flawed research model is for the research-active community to be missing in action.

(No names or references here, either.)