Sat, 6 Aug 1994 08:23:41 -0700 for <socgrad@ucsd.edu>
Date: Sat, 6 Aug 1994 09:23:40 -0600 (MDT)
From: rebel palm aitchison <rpalm@unm.edu>
Subject: tell me it's not true!
To: socgrad <socgrad@UCSD.EDU>, qualrs <qualrs-l@uga.cc.uga.edu>,
        methods <methods@unmvma.unm.edu>
This may be a very naive question, but I think it's fruitful for 
discussion even if I'm the only one under the delusion that the integrity 
of research is more important than getting the "right" results.  I'm 
sending this to more than one list of which I'm a member, so my apologies 
if you get duplicates.

I recently had a conversation with the PI on the grant that I work for
about publishing the results of the research on the grant.  He told me
that to get published in the "major" journals for ANY field (this would be
Nat'l Journal of Public Health for him, but I'm in Soc so I'm asking if
this is true of ASR or AJS), the results of the research MUST BE
CONFIRMATORY!!  He said that unless you came up with a hypothesis,
methodology, etc. that could be confirmed, you wouldn't get published, at
least in those journals. 

Now this severly disturbed me.  I have always felt that research that 
*eliminated* variables was just as important as the research that *found* 
variables (i.e. combinations that "worked" with the dependent var).  
Guess that's from growing up with physicists and mathematicians, who 
often would get into long discussions along the lines of "well, now we 
know it's not that!" which would initiate "so what could it be if it's 
not that?" discussions, all of which they considerful fruitful and 
valuable.  But then, in that generation, they liked working off each 
other's work and didn't need to hog the glory for themselves (i.e. be The 
One who *found* The Right Answer).  

Anyway, what this signified for biasing research really disturbed me, 
that the major journals in a field only wanted the "right" answers, and 
that to get published (so you can list these all-important journals on 
your vita) you had to come up with confirmatory findings only.  Now I've 
had a sneaking suspicion anyway that many researchers, after spending 
years sometimes on a research project, might want to squirrel their 
findings so that the results "look good", but I always thought this was 
an ego problem.  Now I find out that it's actually institutionalized in 
the publishing process. 

Is he right?? Is this true in soc as well as in public health or psych or 
communications, as he told me?

What also bothered me about this, if it's true, is that he sat there and 
told me about it as if this is perfectly okay!