<i>Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology and Related Sciences.</i>Pitirim A. Sorokin

Horton, Donald

doi:10.1086/222017

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Nevertheless, we can see multiple bubbles, at least in the social sciences, if social scientists' complaints about the non-cumulation of their disciplines are to be believed. Thus, sociologists have repeatedly decried sociological amnesia (Collins, 1994;Gans, 1992;Sorokin, 1956), leading to important works being forgotten and already-known phenomena rediscovered; Scheff (1995) describes US sociology as divided into 'academic gangs', with members of each gang expressing uncritical admiration for the other members' works and ignoring outsiders. Abbott (2001) reflects that social sciences as a whole currently tend to disintegrate into 'generational paradigms', putting forward nearly (but not exactly) the same knowledge claims.…”

Section: Interactions and Collusionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The art of ignoring others’ work among academics: A guessing game model of scholarly information search

Соколов

2022

Soc Stud Sci

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Why do scholars pay attention to some works, but not others? This article explores a theoretical model in which scholars search the literature to make sure that their findings are new to their immediate audience. Within the present model, individuals easily disregard literatures of which their audiences are probably unaware. Institutionally organized audiences thus serve as enforcers of the information search. Their members may tacitly collaborate in maintaining unawareness of intellectual developments outside of their common attention space. This model allows us to explain phenomena on which earlier models fail – for example why academics sometimes ignore apparently relevant sources of information or how groups of scholars turn into bubbles, censoring information about findings made in the outside world.

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