Adversarial collaborations bring together teams of intellectual “adversaries” to tackle contested research questions within shared areas of expertise. Unlike more traditional research in which research teams are often composed of scholars with similar theoretical and empirical understandings of the research topic, adversarial collaboration offers an approach for scholars to work alongside peers with distinctly competing views on the research subject. Together, they carry out a shared research project on a point of academic contention. By incorporating diverse viewpoints as an explicit feature of the research team, adversarial collaborations help researchers uncover blind spots, combat groupthink, and more rigorously pursue a wide range of questions and possible answers.

Many contested scholarly topics are well-suited for adversarial collaborations. This is especially true for topics that have been plagued by accusations of biased methods, disputes about appropriate measurement and modeling, conflicting interpretations of evidence, or other methodological disagreements. Adversarial collaborations on hotly debated topics may result in studies that are more rigorous than those conducted by like-minded research teams and, consequently, produce higher-quality research that advances scientific inquiry. 

However, even nascent theories can benefit from adversarial collaborations. Exploring emerging theories through adversarial collaborations may act as an intellectual “stress test,” highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of new ideas upon which subsequent research agendas can be built earlier than they might otherwise have appeared. 

Adversarial collaborations are most fruitful when exploring falsifiable ideas and empirical questions. They are likely less effective when disagreements are primarily normative (e.g., what should be valued) or when there is no agreement on what constitutes valid evidence. Conceptual or moral disagreements also are less likely to benefit, although they still may be promising candidates for adversarial collaborations if shared empirical claims can be teased out of the disagreement.

This resource guide provides steps on how to design such a collaboration, best practices and examples of previous adversarial collaborations, and additional resources for consideration.