{"id":334,"date":"2016-07-16T16:21:21","date_gmt":"2016-07-16T20:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/?p=334"},"modified":"2025-12-12T22:59:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T03:59:38","slug":"101-terms-for-denigrating-others-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/2016\/07\/101-terms-for-denigrating-others-research\/","title":{"rendered":"101 Terms for Denigrating Others\u2019 Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

In scholarly terms, a review of the literature or literature review is a summation of the previous research conducted on a particular topic. With a dismissive literature review, a researcher assures the public that no one has yet studied a topic or that very little has been done on it. Dismissive reviews can be accurate, for example with genuinely new scientific discoveries or technical inventions. But, often, and perhaps usually, they are not.<\/p>\n

A recent article<\/a> in the Nonpartisan Education Review<\/em><\/a> includes hundreds of statements\u2014dismissive reviews\u2014of some prominent education policy researchers.* Most of their statements are inaccurate; perhaps all of them are misleading.<\/p>\n

\u201cDismissive review\u201d, however, is the general term. In the \u201ctype\u201d column of the files linked to the article<\/a>, a finer distinction is made among simply \u201cdismissive\u201d\u2014meaning a claim that there is no or little previous research, \u201cdenigrating\u201d\u2014meaning a claim that previous research exists but is so inferior it is not worth even citing, and \u201cfirstness\u201d\u2014a claim to be the first in the history of the world to ever conduct such a study. Of course, not citing previous work has profound advantages, not least of which is freeing up the substantial amount of time that a proper literature review requires.<\/p>\n

By way of illustrating the alacrity with which some researchers dismiss others\u2019 research as not worth looking for, I list the many terms marshaled for the \u201cdenigration\u201d effort in the table below. I suspect that in many cases, the dismissive researcher has not even bothered to look for previous research on the topic at hand, outside his or her small circle of colleagues.<\/p>\n

Regardless, the effect of the dismissal, particularly when coming from a highly influential researcher, is to discourage searches for others’ work, and thus draw more attention to the dismisser. One might say that \u201cthe beauty\u201d of a dismissive review is that rival researchers are not cited, referenced, or even identified, thus precluding the possibility of a time-consuming and potentially embarrassing debate.<\/p>\n

Just among the bunch of high-profile researchers featured in the Nonpartisan Education Review<\/em> article<\/a>, one finds hundreds of denigrating terms employed to discourage the public, press, and policymakers from searching for the work done by others. Some in-context examples:<\/p>\n