Discussion of:“Accounting and the Epistemology of

Ignorance”

Discussant:

Sven ModellManchester Business School

Focus and Interest of Paper

• Accounting scholars don’t “practise what they preach” when it comes to making their research findings auditable, verifiable and replicable.

• This is primarily manifest in a dearth of efforts to conduct and publish replication studies.

• It is also manifest in poorly developed routines for data sharing (despite editorial policies emphasising this).

• Hence our discipline suffers from an “epistemology of ignorance”.

• Accounting may be falling into disrespute as a “science”. • What, if anything, can we learn from other disciplines?

Key Arguments/Findings• Replication is the scientific “gold standard” in many

disciplines, especially medicine, but practices vary across disciplines (e.g., psychology, behavioural sciences).

• There is also a tradition of researchers facilitating replications by sharing data in many of these discipline.

• Without replication there is no “truth”.• But established journals across a range of disciplines still

display a “novelty/originality bias” in their publication standards.

• Lack of closely replicated studies also hampers proper meta-analyses and more cumulative development of knowledge

• Economics is a particularly poor benchmark in these respects, but at least there is a debate on the topic.

• Not very well!• Paucity of closely replicated studies, despite at least

some, major journals officially welcoming such studies.• Bias against publishing null results.• Clear evidence of “originality/novelty bias”.• Hardly any proper meta-analyses, despite long tradition

of publishing more “qualitative” review articles (the “correctness” of which can be questionable).

• Very little debate on the topic.

Key Arguments/Findings:How Does Accounting Research Fare in Relation to These Standards?

Reflections/Discussions

• Is this really a “fair” critique even of mainstream accounting research given its espoused standards of knowledge formation (cf. emphasis on falsifiability and exploration of anomalies in Watts & Zimmerman, 1986).

• Should we expect strict replications to be ontologically feasible or meaningful given the nature of accounting as a social and changeable phenomenon (although this is often neglected by the mainstream)?

• In other words, is accounting research really a “science” and should it be evaluated as such?

• Are there alternative and more relevant criteria for evaluating the “truth” of accounting research?

Reflections/Discussions• Can an evaluation of truth claims really be detached from the

epistemic premises conditioning such truth claims (as the authors seem to do in this paper, see pp. 6-7)?

• In other words, who decides what is “knowledge” and “ignorance” and how are such standards maintained and challenged?

• What is the role of epistemic relativism in determining what is worth replicating and not?

• If replication is still the key concern, then alternative bases for how to conceptualise it that are potentially more relevant to accounting research may be explored (e.g., Tsang & Kwan, AMR, 1999, on critical realism and replications).

• But this requires much more engagement with issues of ontology than is the case in this paper.

In Conclusion

• The paper targets a well-known, but little debated topic in the accounting research literature.

• But is it shooting at the right target?• The discussion of replication can be extended

considerably beyond the “scientific” standards that are now employed.

• Issues of ontology and epistemic relativism would seem to be key to this end.