WHAT KINDS OF SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS ARE OF VALUE TO PERFORM -COMMENT

L. Wallach and M. A. Wallach (1994) argued that many hypotheses tested by social psychologists are either ''near-tautologies'' or derivable from ''near-tautologies'' and thus are of little interest. The authors of this article applaud their concern but find that their conclusions are based on flawed analyses and arguments. Their conceptualization o f ''near-tautology'' is problematic. Their analysis is based on a misc onceived notion of falsifiability and is inattentive to the social con text within which scientific knowledge is accumulated. These problems undermine their efforts to offer a careful analysis of social psycholo gical hypotheses. Most alarmingly, their flawed arguments imply a dang erously narrow prescription as to ''what kinds of social psychology ex periments are of value to perform.''