Of research questions and literature reviews: A reply to Lorenz et al.

This reply is in response to Lorenz et al.'s commentary on our original article, "Déjà vu or something new? The adaptation concept in the climate change literature." Their commentary criticizes our literature review method for not being sufficiently systematic. They do not dispute our conclusions yet call them "biased." We believe the claim of bias is unfounded and we stand by the methods and conclusions in our article. In this reply to their commentary we review 40 articles in a journal they suggest would have led us to a different set of conclusions. The results of that review demonstrate the limitations of the authors' proposed "systematic literature review" to the social sciences. We similarly contend that the authors' recommendation to expand the search terms (e.g. risk management) would confine analysis to just one branch of the climate change adaptation literature. We utilize the more inclusive term "adaptation" to chart the degree of continuity and change in this keyword's meanings and politics.