The Gadsby Syndrome is a term which has been coined to characterise that body of IS research that fails to engage with the IS artifact or concept itself in any meaningful way. The paper which defines the syndrome is provided below. In it you will discover the reason for the choosing the term, The Gadsby Syndrome.

Background
As a former IS practitioner, I became aware of the phenomenon which I've labelled the Gadsby Syndrome pretty soon after reading a few dozen IS papers and it was reinforced after I attended my first IS conference. The Gadsby metaphor came to me in 1996. I eventually wrote it up as a paper at the University of Göteborg in August 2001, and presented it first in a seminar at the Department of Informatics in Umeå on 6 Sep 2001, and at the University of Göteborg on 25 Sep 2001.

The Gadbsy Syndrome paper