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

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Richard Marens wrote:
>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.

Interesting. Besides the availability of user-friendly stats packages,
shortage of tenure-track academic jobs in sociology (as in many other
disciplines) might motivate many students of sociology to avoid "big
picture kind" of work. After all, those who are known for quantitative work
may find non-academic employment more easily than those who seek to produce
better social theories do.

Yoshie