Building on shaky foundations? Lack of falsification and knowledge contestation in IS theories, methods, and practices

ABSTRACT

Among the defining characteristics of a healthy research discipline is the ability to correct its knowledge if more recent evidence creates grounds for this. Studies that reveal errors in earlier theories demonstrate, in line with Karl Popper’s thinking, an approach called falsificationism. They complement approaches aimed at developing and expanding knowledge by generalising empirical observations or postulating new contributions and testing them. The paper presents an analysis that applies this categorisation to abstracts of research papers (N = 5,202) in the eight leading IS journals. Machine-learning-based classification determined that only 7.0% of the papers manifested any clear form of knowledge-contestation, such as falsification, in the approach or findings presented. In light of this, we call on IS researchers to increase the falsification and knowledge-contestation in their research, to nurture more valid theories, methods, and practices, thereby achieving greater societal impact. We present two suitable IS research designs accordingly: knowledge-contesting comparisons and knowledge-contesting replications. We also discuss how these designs, exemplifying opportunities to increase the number of knowledge-contesting studies in the field, can be applied in both positivist and interpretivist research epistemology.

ACCEPTING EDITOR:

• Prof. Frantz Rowe

ASSOCIATE EDITOR:

• Prof. Frantz Rowe

KEYWORDS:

• Methodology
• epistemology
• falsification
• philosophy of science
• scientometric research
• machine learning

Acknowledgments

Antti Salovaara received financial support for this work from the Academy of Finland (grants 259281 and 298879). Jussi Ilmari Nykänen was supported by the Foundation for Economic Education, the HSE Support Foundation, and the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation. Some ideas in this paper were presented in an early form at the ICIS2014 SIGPhil workshop and at ECIS2015. Also, the authors want to thank Juho Pääkkönen for his critical observations and suggestions as to relevant literature.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

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