Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies on day 50 of no lockdown.
Period as an ivory tower academic 57 days
Today my blog is short and late because I have been involved in scholarly activities.
One of my (many) groupies forwarded me an opinion paper recently published by Julian Kircherr in the peer-reviewed academic journal; “Circular Economy and Sustainability” entitled, “Bullshit in the Sustainability and Transitions Literature: a Provocation”. Kircherr states, “Whereas any term including the word “bullshit” may seem odd to feature in a peer-reviewed publication, “bullshit” is an established line of inquiry in the academy, possibly started by (Harry) Frankfurt”. Frankfurt started the inquiry into common or garden bullshit, but Kircherr proposes an important sub-category of bullshit he terms, “scholarly bullshit” to critique many papers published in interdisciplinary sustainability and transition journals. Scandalously he suggests that up to 50% of published papers can be classified as scholarly bullshit. The term scholarly bullshit has been defined by the late David Graeber who has featured in my earlier blogs as scholarship that is so pointless and unnecessary that even the scholar producing it cannot justify its existence.
Kircherr proposes a number of archetypes for scholarly bullshit, but I want to focus on just two of these for today’s discussion. They are “masters thesis madness” and, “activist rants”. Kirchner cruelly suggests that many established professors push out one co-authored circular economy paper after another in questionable journals. These are often based on a handful of qualitative interviews and an analysis that is not necessarily replicable and/or conclusions that are wide-sweeping and not backed by the data. In my first iteration as an academic, I worked in the chemical engineering department, and I was only involved in quantitative research which is generally based on the scientific method. This I know and love. Now that I’m working in a business school I am having to learn and understand a lot more about qualitative research and it’s hard. Some of this research reads to me like a political manifesto or an activist rant. Of course, I have been known to rant or express strong political views on my blog but then this is not a peer-reviewed journal. Indeed, one of my readers who cannot qualify as a groupie has called my blog my weekly rant. On the positive side, it looks like I might be able to get some of my rants published in peer-reviewed journals.
Kircherr also describes the difficulty he faced in getting his provocation published because some of the reviewers and editors did not like the topic or the message.
Is it good to be provocative? One of the purposes of a provocation is to wake people out of their slumber and get a response. The good purpose of being provocative is to get people to think and consider different perspectives. However, being provocative can often be perceived as being inflammatory or insulting. Calling your peer-reviewed journal article bullshit will not go down well with the authors however true it may be. More polite terminology is required when dealing with students and your peers about their work. However, when one does a meta-analysis like Kirchner has done then there is value in dispensing with politeness and being provocative. Positive change will often only occur after provocation and sometimes repeated provocation.
Being provocative is perhaps also not going to help you get ahead in an organisation, particularly a hierarchical organisation. However, when one looks at the many case studies of organisations that failed you can see a consistent theme that their leaders were not challenged or provoked when it mattered.
When one is at the end of your career then getting ahead is no longer front of mind and you can afford to be more provocative. Expect more provocations from me.
Thank you for all the ideas and comments. I really appreciate them and please keep them coming.
Regards
Bruce
Ruminant Pink Friday 