The Promotion of Avoidable Ignorance in the British Journal of Social Work (Gambrill,2018): A Very Short Reply

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a significant theme in contemporary research, policy, and practice among the health and social work professional disciplines. If social work is to make its mark and earn and sustain respect as a research- and knowledge-based practice discipline, it is imperative that the social work academy is open to vigorous, rigorous, and open discussion between ourselves and able to present a distinctively social work perspective to the outside world which demonstrates this authenticity. It was from this starting point that we, as editors of the British Journal of Social Work (BJSW), responded in the affirmative to the suggestion from two senior social work academics that we might consider publishing an article critiquing articles published in the BJSW, which (in their view) “perpetuated misunderstanding of science and EBP” (e-mail communication, 24 September 2016). Recognizing the importance of this discussion, we agreed to send for review a double length paper which, if accepted, would be published alongside two other articles which scrutinized and commented on the BJSW’s history as a “journal of record” (Jobling, Shaw, Jang, Czarnecki, & Ramatowski, 2017; Victor, Hodge, Perron, Vaughn, & Salas-Wright, 2017). The co-authored article, “The Promotion of Avoidable Ignorance by the British Journal of Social Work,” was sent to three reviewers for blind peer review; each reviewer also commented on a revised version, unanimously recommending that the article should be rejected for publication. It is this paper, sent to the BJSW, to which the following comments apply.

In their careful and comprehensive comments, totaling some 5,000 words, the reviewers agreed that discussion about the portrayal of EBP in social work scholarship is both timely and important. There was also agreement with the authors’ criticism of the tendency among social work scholars toward naïve discussion and negative representations of “science” and “positivism.” References to Karl Popper and a more nuanced representation of his position vis-à-vis positivism were welcomed—although it was pointed out that neither of these arguments is novel nor did the authors add any new perspective. However, the reviewers found a number of significant weaknesses which the authors failed to address in their resubmission. These concerns are continued in the version of the invited paper later published in Research on Social Work Practice, which the author, Eileen Gambrill, notes differs slightly from that sent to the BJSW.

First, the method used to identify and review the published articles on which the critique is based itself lacked rigor. For example, no justification was given for the date range of 2005–2016. No list of papers was given. This produces confusion in the reader as to whether cited papers are part of the list of those found in the journal or being adduced from other sources. Sometimes papers were cited from the BJSW which were not in the date range, and there was insufficient account of the inclusion and exclusion of articles for readers to judge the quality of the review. Journal articles were selected on the basis of their use of the term “positivism” or “positivist,” yielding a total of 227 articles over the 12-year study period. However, in the discussions of the misunderstanding and distortions of science and of the process of EBP, there was no sense as to whether these misunderstandings were universal across the articles or indeed of any variations across the sample (only 34 articles are actually cited in the Gambrill version). One reviewer wondered whether a search that tied consideration of EBP to “positivis*” unduly predisposed the results.

Second, the authors’ argument was deemed to be flawed on a number of counts. For example, the authors complained of “cherry-picking” in the articles cited yet themselves repeatedly returned to the same few sources both as evidence of “misrepresentation” and as “evidence” that supported their own argument. In fact, the reviewers found numerous examples of assertion substituting for evidence. One BJSW author was rebuked for using the term “uncritical adoption” (in respect of EBP), but the authors failed to recognize their own uncritical adoption of a particular model of EBP as their starting point and their intellectually predisposing assumption that qualitative research is more susceptible to bias than quantitative. Use of “original sources” was held up as the gold standard for correct interpretation, but this ignores the significant use which is made in scholarship of subsequent comment, interpretation, and adaptation to other contemporary contexts—as they themselves made use of sources utilizing Popper.

Third, all three reviewers independently pointed to a failure to distinguish different definitions of EBP as well as its evolving nature (the term can be traced in the United States back to the late 1970s and is not a recent Internet-facilitated phenomenon, as suggested) or to cite important earlier work and more recent work addressing contemporary debates—such as the role of discretion and judgment. The omission of important contributions from Macdonald (1990), Davies, Nutley, and Smith (2000), Nutley, Walter, and Davies (2007), Brekke (2012), Okpych and Yu (2014), Shaw (2016) and Mullen (2016) was highlighted. Reviewers acknowledged that the challenges of implementation of EBP were hinted at, but the discussion did not allow for “pure” versus “bowdlerized” interpretations of EBP as well as more nuanced understandings. Finally, although criticizing a number of the articles reviewed for their failure to contextualize their arguments, the authors likewise assumed a context-free position (e.g., in assuming the five-step model for EBP) and in general showed little recognition of the range of environments in which social work is practiced internationally. This weakness compounded the problems arising from the static, single model definition of EBP, in that the authors missed the opportunity to question whether EBP means the same thing in the United States as in the UK or elsewhere in the world—a point well developed by Fortune and others (Fortune, 2014).

The authors were invited to resubmit their articles in the light of the reviews, but the resubmission dealt with some of the minor detail while failing to engage with some of the more substantive points, for example, the implications of the search procedure for the selection of articles and the emergence of more nuanced approaches to EBP such as evidence-informed practice. Further, as editors and reviewers, we suggest that the foundations of the paper are questionable. The terms “misrepresentation,” “misunderstandings,” and “avoidable ignorance” (not to mention its “promotion”) themselves require interrogation if the author(s) are not to be guilty of assuming omnipotence for their perspective. Which papers on EBP in the BJSW did not (in their terms) misrepresent EBP? What are they saying about the robustness of the peer review system since they have no way of knowing the perspective or expertise of the reviewers of the articles they cited or the dialogue between authors and reviewers which took place before the article was accepted?

In conclusion, as editors of a long-standing and respected social work journal with wide international engagement, we welcome a critical discussion of EBP as understood and represented within social work and acknowledge that the BJSW is seen as a significant vehicle for that discussion. Unfortunately, The Promotion of Avoidable Ignorance, although a stimulating read, does not adequately meet that challenge, but we would encourage others to contribute to this timely and important debate.