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Epistemological pluralism and scientific development.

The Journal of Personality Disorders now features occasional invited target essays, accompanied by commentaries. The first invited essay under my editorship was by Christopher Hopwood, Aidan Wright, Emily Ansell, and Aaron Pincus, entitled “The Interpersonal Core of Personality Pathology” (Volume 27, Issue Number 3, June 2013). I am pleased that the current issue contains another new invited essay, by Kristian Markon, entitled “Epistemological Pluralism and Scientific Development: An Argument Against Authoritative Nosologies.” Thoughtful commentaries on Markon’s paper were composed by Allan Harkness and Scott Lilienfeld, Peter Tyrer, Roger Blashfield, and Peter Zachar. In his provocative and important essay, Markon argues cogently that official nosologies such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) act to constrain, as opposed to acting to facilitate, scientific progress. This is an important and timely topic because we are currently witnessing a growing dissatisfaction with the way in which official nosologies constrain thinking about psychopathology. Perhaps the most striking contemporary example is the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Research Domain Criteria Project (RDoC), which is framed by ideas very different from those framing the DSM. For example, RDoC constructs are explicitly dimensional, whereas DSM-5 remains mired in hundreds of overlapping categories (albeit there are dimensional innovations in Section III). How will our field fare in this brave new world in which NIMH and the American Psychiatric Association appear to be working at cross purposes? This remains to be seen. Nevertheless, Markon offers one potential way forward, which essentially amounts to relying on scientific discourse as a means of advancing the field, as opposed to letting official nosologies “do the thinking for us.” With regard to the Journal of Personality Disorders, we remain open to research based on official nosologies, but we definitely will not limit our scope to the constructs enshrined in official nosologies. We welcome submissions that pursue Markon’s themes and embrace competitive epistemological pluralism.