A Note on the Armstrongl Mitroff Debate

Abstract

Recently, Armstrong and Mitroff have joined an important debate over the methods of science. We are afraid that because of the tongue-in-cheek fashion in which it was done that two important issues were intertwined and may not be fully appreciated. The issues involved the practice of science versus the methods and theory versus data.

A Paradigm Too Far? A Dynamic Stability Reconsideration of the Social Network Research Program

“…3 Despite the importance of Lakatos's challenge to the paradigm approach to science, his work has had little influence on debates in organizational studies. (But see Boal and Willis [1983] for an exception, and see Burawoy [1990] and Vasquez [1997] for Lakatosian approaches to social science research. For an overview of the work of Lakatos, see Larvor [1998], and see Chalmers [1999] and Newton-Smith [2000] for balanced treatments of the respective approaches of Kuhn and Lakatos.…”

Editors’ Introduction

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Responding to the debate between Ian Mitroff (1974, 1980) and J. Scott Armstrong (1979Armstrong ( , 1980 over the methods versus the practice of science, Boal and Willis (1983) asked, "Who benefits?" But, whereas Boal and Willis limited their discussion to the consequences to the individual scientist, the scientific community, and to the theories under examination, Wright and Wright, in the first essay, suggest that the prime beneficiary of any research should be the participant.

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