A research model for fiction

pp. 25-47

in: John Woods, Truth in fiction, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

A research model sets targets for theory, and mandates ways of reaching them with force and conviction. A suboptimal model is one that does well at home but goes astray under adaptation either by misjudging a theory's target, or by authorizing methods of enquiry and analysis, without sufficient regard for the motivating data currently in play. A common way of mishandling a theory's methods is by applying theoretical instruments which have been purpose-built for different kinds of motivating data or different kinds of theoretical targets. Data can be mismanaged in various ways. Data of material relevance to a theory's purposes could be overlooked. Or they could be duly noted but misinterpreted. The first would be a data-collection error, the second an error of data-analysis. Mismanagement of a theory's methods of enquiry and instruments of analysis is sometimes the direct result of a data-analysis error. Either the authorized methods work for the already specified data but not for the overlooked ones, or they do well with a comprehensively assembled data-base but only under a mistaken construal of the data within. Going procedurally awry is sometimes a matter of not having better alternatives. Methods of doubtful fit with motivating data are sometimes persisted with in the spirit of faute de mieux, evocative of the idea that it is better to have a defective theory rather than none at all. Doubtless true in various instances, nevertheless a danger inheres in the power of ill-fitting methods to distort the originating data seriously enough to deny them a recognizable presence in a theory designed to improve our understanding of them.