A "bad" paper may be "ideological" because its "findings" don't flow from its premises and its empirics. But what even is a "finding" or a conclusion when it comes to social science?
Thanks for writing this. The opening part gets to something I struggle with and worry about: it feels gross to try to audit someone's politics on the basis of their writing or to deem a particular work ideological. Where's the line, etc.? This is why I try to focus specifically on research standards--what's theory v. what's not, do you engage in framing and generalization efforts or are you focused on your case, are you compromising the research process? While personally I think we should keep our own politics out of our writing, I also recognize I'm in the minority in that view--moreover, it's not clear to me that the public always wants us to be so sterile. This view also informs my specific recommendations: we just need to focus on producing good work that follow certain standards that have been curated to ensure trustworthiness; trying for ideological balance is good in principle, but it's not clear to me that it's necessary or desirable given the expected implementation challenges. Anyway, bc a lot of folks read my normativity article as condemning any politics or normativity at all in one's personal life or research, I wrote this: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-026-09726-7
Where it gets trickier is at the field level, e.g., at an ASA conference where at least 90% of the research questions only appeal if you care about far-far left concerns (in part because they are so narrow). Some of that would be fixed by scholarly standards (framing in core issues and thinking across fields), but not all of it. But rather than a political fix, I call for a 'decada' effort where we try to fix the blindspots and holes (also discussed in the linked piece).
I have already read your normativity piece in T&S and I will read this!
Mostly, I think we agree. But I am much more pessimistic than you about fixing things by changing "scholarly standards"; it's not clear to me that one can come up with standards when the objects of one's analysis are things like worldviews and imaginaries (what would count as "sufficient" evidence?). I suppose individual journals can have scholarly standards but that will involve enforcement from editors (unsustainable) and undercut peer review (which, while wildly imperfect, seems like a good thing to base research around).
And while I agree with you that the goal of any empirical social science should be to *explain* (and I agree with you that theories should be about generalization and prediction), it's not clear to me why that should be its only goal in the same way that the say the goal of physics or biology is to explain and predict.
Thanks for writing this. The opening part gets to something I struggle with and worry about: it feels gross to try to audit someone's politics on the basis of their writing or to deem a particular work ideological. Where's the line, etc.? This is why I try to focus specifically on research standards--what's theory v. what's not, do you engage in framing and generalization efforts or are you focused on your case, are you compromising the research process? While personally I think we should keep our own politics out of our writing, I also recognize I'm in the minority in that view--moreover, it's not clear to me that the public always wants us to be so sterile. This view also informs my specific recommendations: we just need to focus on producing good work that follow certain standards that have been curated to ensure trustworthiness; trying for ideological balance is good in principle, but it's not clear to me that it's necessary or desirable given the expected implementation challenges. Anyway, bc a lot of folks read my normativity article as condemning any politics or normativity at all in one's personal life or research, I wrote this: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-026-09726-7
Where it gets trickier is at the field level, e.g., at an ASA conference where at least 90% of the research questions only appeal if you care about far-far left concerns (in part because they are so narrow). Some of that would be fixed by scholarly standards (framing in core issues and thinking across fields), but not all of it. But rather than a political fix, I call for a 'decada' effort where we try to fix the blindspots and holes (also discussed in the linked piece).
I have already read your normativity piece in T&S and I will read this!
Mostly, I think we agree. But I am much more pessimistic than you about fixing things by changing "scholarly standards"; it's not clear to me that one can come up with standards when the objects of one's analysis are things like worldviews and imaginaries (what would count as "sufficient" evidence?). I suppose individual journals can have scholarly standards but that will involve enforcement from editors (unsustainable) and undercut peer review (which, while wildly imperfect, seems like a good thing to base research around).
And while I agree with you that the goal of any empirical social science should be to *explain* (and I agree with you that theories should be about generalization and prediction), it's not clear to me why that should be its only goal in the same way that the say the goal of physics or biology is to explain and predict.