And the great transdisciplinary swindle: Lack of originality or something more worrisome?

Abstract

This commentary seeks to right what is now an old wrong – to attribute Manfred Max-Neef's (2005) model of disciplinary interactions in transdisciplinarity to Erich Jantsch (1970). When I first discovered this erroneous situation, it was a startling realisation. It seemed that Manfred Max-Neef had certainly copied and possibly plagiarised Erich Jantsch. We might ask why it is that although both authors are regularly referenced together, a doctoral dissertation (Buchanan, 2016) is the sole published document pointing out this irregularity. In the process of piecing together this (hi)story, I uncovered further documents that point toward something more common and perhaps more insidious than lack of originality. Manfred Max-Neef seems to have made a choice, conscious or otherwise, to not engage with, and perhaps even to dismiss, the scholarly purpose and intent of Erich Jantsch's transdisciplinary model. Recent neurological studies suggest that although this kind of behaviour has deep biological roots, it is not unavoidable. I wonder whether dismissing another scholar's beliefs may be a more serious indictment of our shared scholarly enterprise than plagiarism. My hope is that this salutary tale sets the record a little straighter, and acts as a reflective and reflexive trigger for scholars everywhere.