https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732317711902 Qualitative Health Research 2017, Vol. 27(9) 1377–1379 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1049732317711902 journals.sagepub.com/home/qhr Dialogue I was delighted with the eloquent and well informed response paper “Asking More of Good Scholarship” by Britten and her team (Britten, Garside, Pope, Frost, & Cooper, 2017) and highly appreciative of its important contributions to the dialogue on many levels. It clearly confirmed the need for a lively and fulsome dialogue on this topic, to ensure that the troublesome issues associ- ated with the explosion of activity in qualitative synthe- sis/metasynthesis are well documented. Furthermore, it shifted the focus of my initial editorial (Thorne, 2017), which was primarily concerned with detecting and dis- couraging poor scholarship in the name of qualitative metasynthesis toward a more sophisticated philosophical dialogue about what it is that we expect of this genre. As I see it, our points of agreement far outweigh any differ- ences in perspective, and therefore I very much enjoyed the reasoned arguments this team put forth with respect to such issues as the language with which we ought to refer- ence this form of scholarly activity, the role and relevance of standards for methodological transparency and coher- ence, and the quality criteria toward which we ought to be aspiring, not only in qualitative synthesis per se, but also in the qualitative research genre in general. My “Metasynthetic Madness” paper pitched its argu- ments to be provocative. I had hoped to stimulate discus- sion in the field and, in so doing, try to stem the rising tide of aggregative products that, although adhering to what might seem a reasonable technical procedural approach to literature selection and reportage, are largely devoid of critical reflection, robust theoretical interpretation, or meaningful consideration with respect to their actual rel- evance. I was worried that, in the health field in particu- lar, without a vigorous counter-argument to point to, we were collectively sliding toward normalizing a form of scholarly activity that has the “look and feel” of an evi- dence claim, allowing us to bypass the gorgeous multi- faceted richness that high-quality qualitative research can add to our thinking. 711902QHR XX X 10.1177/1049732317711902Qualitative Health ResearchThorne research-article 2017 1 The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Corresponding Author: Sally Thorne, Professor, School of Nursing, The University of British Columbia, T201-2211 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 2B5. Email: sally.thorne@nursing.ubc.ca Advancing the Field of Synthesis Scholarship: A Response to Nicky Britten and Colleagues Sally Thorne 1 Abstract Continuing the dialogue and debate on the relevance and value of qualitative metasynthesis research for the health fields, Thorne comments on some of the ideas raised by Britten and colleagues in response to her January 2017 Qualitative Health Research editorial on Metasynthetic Madness. Here she extends the debate on the terminology with which we refer to this kind of scholarly work and the kinds of research synthesis that hold potential for adding value to existing knowledge about matters of health and illness. In the spirit of engaging an ongoing critical conversation, she proposes that the kinds of metasynthesis products that get published ought to be those capable of demonstrating actual relevance. She reminds us that the procedural steps that have come to be associated with metasynthesis in many of the recently published reports are merely the stage-setting one does in order to prepare the way for the actual intellectual work of synthesis. By whatever name it is known, if qualitative synthesis is to make a meaningful scholarly contribution in the health domain, Thorne argues that it must demonstrate the kind of thoughtfully critical and interpretive intellectual engagement that takes our understanding of phenomena significantly beyond what we could have known on the basis of an ordinary kind of literature review, offering us an original form of insight that would not have been otherwise accessible. Keywords epistemology; methodology; research design; qualitative synthesis; metasynthesis