The absolute state of research in Communication Education: facing Hanlon’s Razor

The opportunity to write critiques, self-appraisals, or agenda-setting essays is perhaps one of the great vanities of academia. That the scholars who write them are often, themselves, a part of the very group of people who created the problem is rarely acknowledged. Rather, authors often write with the hubris that their scholarly intervention will be the one to save the day. It is, therefore, with some trepidation that I write this essay. I make no pretensions to possessing a God’s eye view nor being a Promethean fire-bringer—I recognize my scholarship has contributed to some of the problems I will discuss. However, I do take some solace in knowing that this essay adds to a chorus of voices (within and beyond this forum and journal) who have sought to address the quality, direction, and tone of communication and instruction scholarship. In fact, in preparing for this response, I was struck by how many of these types of essays have been written over the past 30 years. And, simultaneously, how little has changed despite these pleas. The lack of substantive change in our field begs the question: what has prevented our scholarly community from advancing? Here, we might adopt Hanlon’s Razor to explore whether our failure to progress is due to stupidity or malice (Bloch, 2003). And, with all due respect to the adage, I think (historically speaking) our best answer is the latter in this case. That is, the reason we have not seen it is because it was not in the self-interest of many within our field to do so. Questionable research designs, methodological exclusion, and vacuous findings were accepted as normal for far too long. As Communication Education became dominated by research characterized by these failings, it became a self-reinforcing loop: why spend the resources to do excellent research when unsophisticated work would be published in one of the most prestigious journals of the discipline? This problem, in turn, produced a fiercely insular, self-congratulatory, and defensive group of scholars who maintained their dominance over this outlet by advancing the careers of others who would keep accepting poor-quality scholarship (as reviewers or editors) with the expectation that they would return the favor when they submitted (as authors). In many ways, the problems with methodology that we deal with today are the result of inertia from this time, which has created a culture where high-quality research remains the exception rather than the rule. My argument, then, is that our field must break out of the well-worn path of mediocrity blazed by the scholars of the past by creating a culture that produces and rewards