There is a very real need to argue for an expanded understanding of research methods and understandings of knowledge as they relate to areas of practice. This is particularly so for Design as it currently finds itself mis-fitting in traditional university knowledge and research structures. The article, by John Wood, "The culture of academic rigour: does design research really need it" raises many substantial issues for those of us involved in the development of graduate studies programmes in areas of practice-based academic research. In expanding our understanding of knowledge, we need to ensure that we are not inflating the centrality of one practice over another. We need to ensure, in our elaborations of Design ways of knowing and doing that we do not diminish our own arguments through a denial of the significance, to Design research, of other ways of knowing and doing. This paper applies aspects of traditional philosophic rigour to the question of the uses of the culture of academic rigour, as a practice, in current and future Design research.