The University We Need by Warren Treadgold

Author:Warren Treadgold
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594039904
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC
Published: 2018-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

How to Judge Research

How, then, can we judge scholarship more or less objectively, even near the beginning of an academic career? Some people think we cannot, but I would suggest five main criteria for scholarly excellence, which should be applicable to most kinds of scholarship, even in the natural sciences. First, the work should be new: it should say something that nobody has said before, at least in quite the same way. Second, the work should be important: it should make a significant (though perhaps small) difference in our understanding of its subject. Third, the work should be accurate: it should not be based on glaring factual errors that invalidate its conclusions. Fourth, the work should be rigorous, which is not precisely the same thing as being factually accurate: it should not be based on clear misinterpretations of the factual evidence. Fifth, the work should be intelligible, even if abstruse: at a minimum, a qualified specialist must be able to tell whether something new, important, accurate, and rigorous is buried in there somewhere. Good scholarship cannot utterly fail any of these five tests, and excellent scholarship should pass all five comfortably, if not always to the same extent.

Such criteria for scholarly excellence need to be interpreted with a degree of flexibility. Excellence in some of the five criteria can sometimes compensate for deficiencies in others. For instance, we should tolerate (but notice) errors, fallacies, or obscurities in a book that is strikingly new and important, as long as these are not so serious as to invalidate its conclusions. A new, accurate, rigorous, and intelligible point of minor but real significance can be enough to make an important article, if not perhaps an important book. A book or article can be important even if its thesis turns out to be mistaken, because it can still stimulate scholarly discussion that leads to a better explanation of an important problem. On the other hand, if the original thesis depends on clearly identifiable errors or fallacies, it will needlessly distract other scholars by forcing them to refute its errors or fallacies. For example, a book maintaining that the ancient Greeks had arrived in Greece as aliens from outer space would be new and would address an important question, the origin of the Greeks. But if the book’s argument was based on obvious errors and fallacies (as it presumably would be), it would be worthless as scholarship, if not as science fiction.

Alan Sokal designed his article in Social Text to be of this type: it would have been new and important if it had been right, but its deliberate errors, fallacies, and obscurities made it worthless as scholarship, though an extremely useful example of the defects of postmodernism. The worst defect of postmodernism is its excessive tolerance of errors, fallacies, and obscurities, as long as they are postmodernist, “innovative,” and “interesting.” Note that being innovative and interesting are not among my five criteria for good scholarship. “Innovative” could be such a criterion if it meant

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