ABSTRACT
Why do researchers do empirical social research that they have reason to know not to do? Why do they sometimes pose research questions that sidestep what they (ought to) know about context and complexity or time and place? This chapter presents an analysis of publications from and about one such apparent research project; a prominent study (a randomised controlled trial of an intervention to improve safe childbirth in Uttar Pradesh, India), which was published in a prominent academic journal (New England Journal of Medicine), and which informed a prominent policy call (to move all childbirths around the world to hospitals). The analysis suggests a twofold hypothesis: first, motivated unawareness (things they know but act as if they do not know, given their discipline or career incentives); second, genuine unawareness (things they do not know because they were educated or socialised by their discipline or career to not know or seek to know). The chapter concludes with a call for radical transparency: researchers should systematically work through their (un)awareness of context and complexity and of time and place and should openly declare how they did so for each research project before (as part of its justification), during, and after the project.
