Creationism and management “science”

January 15, 2008

ca230_1treverSome things are too good not to share, and I really liked this cartoon so here it is. Hat tip to The Primate Diaries for the link.

Of course its not just creationists who adopt the lets find the supporting facts approach. A large amount of management articles and most of the popular science and other books written by journalists all pop out a theory, and then go and fill a whole book or article with cases to support said theory. Interestingly they tend to ignore contradictory evidence. Another other thing that fascinates me (in the sense of a horror movie) is the way in which the social and management sciences feel they can validate a theory or approach by applying it to past data. Given that we, by our nature, selectively scan available material it is not surprising that it is easy to find supporting “evidence”.

It’s about time we had a greater understanding and willingness to engage with theory, less retrospective coherence and fewer simplistic recipes. Too many of those recipes are simply stale collations of misunderstood platitudes such as this specimen.

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