The Emperor Just Might Be Wearing Pants

Abstract

This is a commentary in response to Dixon et al.’s (Behavior Analysis and Practice, 8(1), 7–15, 2015) article entitled, “Research rankings of behavior analytic graduate training programs and their faculty” in Behavior Analysis in Practice. The severe restriction of range for the metric used to identify faculty productivity and knowledge of research calls the implications drawn from the data into question. Suggestions on how to broaden the metric are made along with implications for doing so. This is an important topic, and many people will need to contribute to a robust conversation about our graduate training programs given the exponential growth we have faced in recent decades.