The Peter Effect in Early Experimental Education Research

Abstract

One of the signatures of scientific writing is its ability to present the claims of science as if they were “untouched by human hands.” In the early years of experimental education, researchers achieved this by adopting a citational practice that led to the sedimentation of their cardinal method, the analysis of variance, and their standard for statistical significance, 0.05. This essentially divorces their statistical framework from its historical conditions of production. Researchers suppressed their own agency through the use of passive voice and nominalization. With their own agency out of the way, they imbued the methods, results, and presentational devices themselves with the active agency of the situation through the use of personification. Such a depiction creates the impression that the researchers and audience stand on equal epistemic ground as interested witnesses to the autonomous activity of a third party, the method, which churns out the brute facts of science.

A Bibliography of Works Published in the History of Professional Communication from 1994–2009: Part 2

“…In "Understanding Statistical Significance" (2001) [100], he argues that this concept was sociallyconstructed in response to sociohistorical conditions. In "The Peter Effect in Early Experimental Education Research" (2003) [101], he discusses how social science research published in the Journal of Experimental Education from 1932 through 1944 based its findings on Ronald A. Fisher's analysis of variance to make findings seem to be "untouched by human hands" (p. 14). Brenton Faber, in "Popularizing Nanoscience" (2006) [102], discusses how nanoscience and nanotechnology, which deal with matter on the molecular level, were represented in the popular media during the 1980s and 1990s, and discusses this communication as a highly social discursive process.…”

Achieving Objectivity through Genred Activity: A Case Study

“…Ultimately, the aim of this article is twofold: First, I try to show that objectivity, as it was presented at the MTC, is best understood not as a stylistic feature of organizational texts (contra [13]) but as an overall effect of a genre system, which required not only particular textual features but also the regularization of social interaction among dozens of people across the organization. Second, I try to elucidate some of the implications of that regularized social interaction in terms of the changes in authority and social relations it effected at the MTC.…”