The Importance of History for Accounting Research

This note responds to criticisms in this issue by Subotnik of my 1988 Abacus article. It rejects his claims that the findings in that 1988 article are devoid of social usefulness, that my discussion of knowledge accumulation 'was partial', and finally his suggestion of the futility in using citations as data and citation methods as tools of analysis. It is argued that Subotnik supports his criticisms with little more than rhetoric and unsupported assertions.