social science production (was: Dark Sides of 'Solidarity'?)

[Richard Marens]

re: sociology and thought policing.  Sociologists are getting better at
it.  The availability of easy-to-use statistical packages are giving the
quantoids a great deal of leverage in the academic profession.  That
itself might not seem so terrible, except that as a group that tend to be
politically stupid and intellectually shallow and envy the hell out of the
cache commanded by economists.  There are exceptions.  Mark Mizruchi is a
sophisticated statistician who certainly leans left and I can list others,
but the more successful these become, the more they get caught into
publishing these nitpicky tests of significance and the more they avoid
"big picture kind" of work.