Fuck Nuance (Healy, 2017)

I found this article somewhat ironically on the heels of completing a second-round manuscript review. Healy presents an argument for how the consideration of "nuance* in scientific theory muddles the development of theories that are strong and impactful. While Healy discusses his specific interactions within the world of sociology, I think his argument applies to a great many fields in science, and I saw it in the reviews from round one of this neuroscience manuscript. The paper itself was quite strong; all of the reviews (admittedly including my own) were asking for some flavor of nuance, which the authors then had to provide explanations for while defending the scope of their work.

Ultimately, very little of their work needed to change, which made me wonder just how much value those questions added to the science. I think this question can be asked broadly not only of peer review but of scientific discourse as a whole - what are we trying to accomplish by playing 20 questions with someone's presented work? How do we shift the discourse to be more collaborative and productive rather than resembling pre-med students taking digs at each other to try to gain favor with the professor? Or is Healy wrong and this is the only way we avoid pitfalls in theorizing in the vein of Clever Hans?