RIGOR IS RIGOR - BUT RIGOR IS NOT NECESSARILY SCIENCE - COMMENT

Chow (1991) has defined the experimental logic and methodology described by Rosnow and Rosenthal (1989) as being incompatible with his notion of 'conceptual rigor' and even antithetical to the requirements of internal and external validity. The purpose of this response is to suggest: (a) that the two approaches in question are not, in their entirety, mutually exclusive and differ only at one precise step within the theory-corroboration process; and (b) that to rely exclusively on probability of outcome as the sole decision criteria in theory corroboration without being cognizant of the theoretically irrelevant factors (e.g. sample size of study) which affect them seems, to this author, antithetical to science.