The author observes that, in "Applied Utility and the Auto-Ethnographic Short Story: Persuasions for, and Illustrations of, Writing Critical Social Science," Gilbourne, Jones and Jordan present claims about why we might choose to represent auto-ethnographic data in a literary form such as short story and for the "potential" or "capacity" of this kind of writing to achieve certain things. They also claim that literary auto-ethnographic texts might "potentially act as a catalyst for change" or "change previously held views." The author states that it is striking how often social science work of this kind is justified in terms of its "potential;" its potential to "create debate" or "encourage reflection" or "transgress." The author argues that in the absence of any evidence, on the face of it this seems a very weak justification. He further contends that what is missing from Gilbourne, Jones and Jordan's paper, and in this literature generally, is a reason to think that this form of social science writing addresses these matters in particularly compelling ways. It is argued herein that the literary and the social science poles pull writers in different directions and this is an extremely difficult tension to reconcile.