Discussion of: “Accounting and the Epistemology of Ignorance” Discussant: Sven Modell Manchester 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.