The Perils of Paradigm Mentalities: Revisiting Kuhn, Lakatos, and Popper

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Walker
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
Methodological Pluralism ◽  
The Status ◽  
Critical Insight ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Scientific Achievements

A common theme in the Centennial Issue of the American Political Science Review was how subfields have grown more specialized and insulated from one another. In this essay I argue that this trend has been hastened by the inappropriate incorporation of paradigm mentalities, first presented by Thomas Kuhn and later developed by Imre Lakatos. I show how paradigm mentalities help justify rigid opposition to theoretical alternatives and limit critical insight. While paradigm mentalities may be fitting for disciplines that demonstrate Kuhn'sconcrete scientific achievements,they constrain the study of political science and international relations in particular. I begin with a primer that compares Kuhn and Lakatos to Karl Popper. Next, I point to harmful consequences resulting from applying paradigm mentalities to the study of international relations. Among these is the tendency to act as if realism has earned the status of a paradigm and then invoke criteria of incommensurability and “subsumption” to deflect criticism. I conclude by discussing how Popper's model of science provides a better platform for the study of politics by encouraging theoretical and methodological pluralism.

Reviewing the Reviewers: Ideological Bias in the APSR Book Section

1974 ◽  
Vol 7 (04) ◽  
pp. 370-374
Author(s):  
Michael Parenti
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Free World ◽  
Review Section ◽  
Ideological Bias ◽  
American Political Science

I would like to give attention to that portion of theAmerican Political Science Reviewwhich is most read and least criticized, the book review section. My reading ofAPSRbook reviews in recent years leads me to the following observations:Most of the books selected for review adhere to the orthodox ideological values of today's political establishment. More importantly, these books almost invariably are reviewed by political scientists who share the same centrist ideological slant as the authors they are reviewing. In the reviews dealing with international relations, for instance, cold war terms like “totalitarianism”, “Castroism”, “subversion” and “Free World” are employed uncritically. Western capitalist nations are described as having “governments”, while socialist nations are said to have “regimes”, usually identified as being under the tutelage of one personage, hence: “Mao Tse-tung's regime”, and “Fidel Castro's Cuba”. The idea that popular sentiments and democratic in-puts might be part of the governance of countries like Cuba or China is not entertained.

A Response to Jeffrey Isaac

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (04) ◽  
pp. 739
Author(s):  
Gregory J. Kasza
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Comparable Data ◽  
Science Review ◽  
Political Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Regional Association ◽  
American Political Science

The purpose of the present symposium was to evaluate Perestroika's impact. Since theAmerican Political Science Review(APSR), theAmerican Journal of Political Science(AJPS), and theJournal of Politics(JOP) were all targets of criticism in the movement, whereas other national and regional association journals such asPerspectives on PoliticsandPolitical Research Quarterlywere not, I looked for change in the former. Comparable data on the past contents of theAPSRandAJPShad already been published, so I focused my recent surveys on those two. This focus implies no judgment as to the relative prestige of these journals. They pretend to represent the discipline as a whole and are paid for by all association members, and these are sufficient reasons to address their editorial biases.

In Defense of Genopolitics

2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES H. FOWLER ◽  
CHRISTOPHER T. DAWES
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Church Attendance ◽  
Behavior Genetics ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Environment Interaction ◽  
Gene Environment Interaction ◽  
National Longitudinal Study ◽  
Gene Environment ◽  
American Political Science

The American Political Science Review recently published a critique of an article we published in the Journal of Politics in 2008. In that article we showed that variants of the genes 5HTT and MAOA were significantly associated with voter turnout in a sample of 2,300 subjects from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Here, we address the critique first by conducting a replication study using an independent sample of 9,300 subjects. This study replicates the gene-environment interaction of the 5HTT gene variant with church attendance, but not the association with MAOA. We then focus on the general argument of the critique, showing that many of its characterizations of the literature in genetics and in political science are misleading or incorrect. We conclude by illustrating the ways in which genopolitics has already made a lasting contribution to the field of political science and by offering guidelines for future studies in genopolitics that are based on state-of-the-art recommendations from the field of behavior genetics.

Falsification by Atrophy: The Kuhnian Process of Rejecting Theory in US Criminology

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-44
Author(s):  
Brendan D Dooley ◽  
Sean E Goodison
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Random Sample ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
The Status ◽  
Criminology And Criminal Justice

Abstract Thomas Kuhn posits that the structure of science promotes revolutionary discovery. The decision of a scientific community to discard the status quo in favour of a revolutionary paradigm is influenced by sociological forces. Karl Popper disagreed, arguing that falsification is required. An examination of a random sample of 501 articles published in 14 peer-reviewed American outlets in criminology and criminal justice from 1993 to 2008 is coupled with oral histories from 17 leading criminologists in determining which approach best characterizes criminology. Twelve per cent of papers falsify theory. When not explicitly falsified, atrophy occurs when theory is overused (exhaustion), ignored (indolence) and subjected to a sustained critique (assault). The intention of the effort is to document and describe falsification and then invite further discourse.

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