By Nanda Wijermans and Bruce Edmonds
“Greenwashing” is when claims are made by organisations (usually companies) to mislead “the public to believe that a company or other entity is doing more to protect the environment than it is” (United Nations 2026). The intent is to put a spin on their practices to give the impression they are ecologically and climatologically responsible. This is different to the situation where the claims give an accurate impression of what they do, allowing the public to make an accurate assessment.
“Theorywashing” [1] is when aspects of a model are misleadingly justified using some existing theory. Associating such aspects with theory, in this way, helps give the impression that a model is academically justified and not merely an ad hoc construction. The intent is to put a spin on existing modelling choices that were really made for other reasons (ease of implementation, habit etc.). This is different to the situation where the claims gave an accurate impression of the sources of model elements – a genuine attempt to implement an existing theory in a model mechanism.
This should also not be confused with the situation when a modelling team is engaging in theorising using a model [2] – in that case, the theory in question (either existing or being formulated) is the focus of the modelling effort and will stand or fall depending on the success of the modelling. “Theorywashing” is aimed at giving credibility to modelling choices that were actually ad hoc.
Why does theorywashing matter? Firstly, it is just another example of academic authors prioritizing the promotion of their paper over the truthfulness of their justification. This can have deleterious effects, from the serious (e.g. a policy actor making a wrong judgement that results are more rigorous than they are and making unfounded decisions as a result) to the more trivial (e.g. wasting other academics’ time as they chase down the reference to understand the reasoning behind a model). Secondly, it maintains the academic norm whereby everything in a model is supported somehow – giving the impression that there are no arbitrary modelling choices. This undermines honesty in modelling, as this norm is at odds with modelling reality, where it is almost always necessary to use some auxiliary assumptions to make a simulation work.
Clearly theorywashing can be a matter of degree. A social science theory might be so vaguely defined that a candidate mechanism might happen to be consistent with it, in which case there is little harm in pointing this out. However, this is different from attributing the reason for that implementation choice. In terms of Antosz et al. (2023), which categorises the different uses of “theory” in agent-based modelling. Theorywashing might come into three of these:
- “When a theory is imported from elsewhere to help specify/justify/label a component of a wider ABM”. This is the specific case discussed above.
- “The specific ABM is designed within a more abstract framework. (sometimes called a ‘theoretical framework’)”. This is the case where an ABM is deliberately designed to be consistent and/or using the framework. If this is an accurate portrayal of intention of the modellers this is fine. To the extent the ABM does not really fit the framework or the framework was invoked after the design to justify it, it is not.
- “When a family of related models results from a body of work, collectively constituting a ‘theory’ in some sense”. This is theory in the sense of (Giere 2010) – think of a physics undergraduate course with a title like “The theory of simple harmonic motion”. Again, as in the previous case, this might well be justified as a particular example (e.g. the set of models and maths about “opinion dynamics”), but that is different to whether it was the motivation for the modelling choices.
To put it simply, what we are asking is for honesty in describing the provenance of assumptions, processes and structures of a simulation. If this is honestly described, then a future modeller might attempt to check the robustness of the claimed results to changes in this assumption or even change this assumption and further develop the model. If some aspect is spuriously ascribed to some theory this chance might be missed.
Notes
1. The term was invented by the first author, however we are not the first to use it, e.g. “James L.” wrote about how the Operational Theory Research Institute “…was crucial in ‘theorywashing’ Israeli military actions through the esoteric language of French theory References” (James L. 2023) and Luis Garicano defined theory washing as: “smart minds put to work trying to make coherent the incoherent and justify the unjustifiable” (Garciano 2025). Our, more specific, usage is consistent with these and retains its nicely pejorative flavour.
2. As in the process leading to a theory, as per (Swedberg 2012).
References
Antosz, P., Birks, D., Edmonds, B., Heppenstall, A., Meyer, R. Polhill, J.G., O’Sullivan, D. & Wijermans, N. (2023) What do you want theory for? – A pragmatic analysis of the roles of “theory” in agent-based modelling. Environmental Modelling & Software, 168, 105802. DOI:10.1016/j.envsoft.2023.105802
Garciano, L (2025) Post on X/Twitter. https://x.com/lugaricano/status/1908543321267433524 (Accessed 26 May 2026)
Giere, R. N. (2010). Explaining science. University of Chicago Press.
James L. (2023) Israeli Deleuzian Forces – Or, the ‘theorywashing’ of occupation. The College Hill Independent, 20th September 2023. https://www.theindy.org/article/3024 (Accessed 26 May 2026)
Swedberg, R. (2012). Theorizing in sociology and social science: turning to the context of discovery. Theory and Society, 41(1), 1–40. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-011-9161-5
United Nations (2026) Greenwashing – the deceptive tactics behind environmental claims. UN website on climate change issues. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/climate-issues/greenwashing (Accessed 26 May 2026)
Wijermans, N. & Edmonds, B. (2026) “Theorywashing” – the practice of misattributing theory to impart academic credibility. Review of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 8 Nov 2026. https://rofasss.org/2026/08/11/theorywashing
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Review of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 