I have two basic comments. The first has to do with the competence of accounting reviewers with minimal statistical (and econometric) training passing judgment on what is essentially econometric work. The second has to do with Vernon Smith cite in Steve's (Kachelmeier, then editor of The Accounting Review) letter. I state these two with no pernicious intent, but in a friendly spirit of intellectual inquiry. In what follows, I'll concentrate on the Vernon Smith cite.
IF I know Vernon personally and can vouch his integrity, then if Vernon says 11:03 I would take it at its face value, heavily discounting possibilities such as his doctoring his watch because he is hungry and we had a 11am lunch appointment, or that he wants to get rid of me for some reason and his 11am appointment with some one else is his alibi. In case of journal submissions withy blind reviews, one can not discount such possibilities if Pond-Fleishman situation is to be avoided at all costs.
The point I am making is that with time we all can agree with the US time server as the arbiter, and so avoid calibration isues. On the other hand, with most empirical social sciences, the sampling problem is somewhat like the Turing's Halting problem in computation; it is undecidable. That being the case, in case of most "empirical" work in accounting replication with more, different, or different regime data must be encouraged. Ignorance is no bliss, and we do not know how many Pons-Fleishman situations exist in accounting.
Laws in the social sciences hold only in a probabilistic sense, the reviewers' acceptance decisions are point estimates of such probabilities. In no science do you accept probability numbers based on a single (or two) estimate. If Steve thinks so he must provide arguments. His communitarian argument holds no water in this context. In the social science, truth is socially constructed, but truth values are physically obtained.
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