[In March, 2009, the National Science Foundation issued a report on a conference about qualitative methods (Lamont and White, 2009). This report followed an earlier report on an earlier conference (Ragin, Nagel, and White, 2004). The two reports differed in important ways and, since documents bearing the imprimatur of the Foundation may seem to have some kind of official status, and might be passed around as presenting an authoritative statement on the matter, I thought it worthwhile to prepare a sort of counter-document, indicating what I think are the shortcomings of the 2009 report, and questioning its implicit claim to authoritative status.]
“Quit whining and learn to do real science by stating theoretically derived, testable hypotheses, with methods of data gathering and analysis specified before entering the field. Then you’ll get NSF grants like the real scientists do.” Howard Becker's summation of the NSF foundation report on qualitative research.
See
Becker's article, a worthwhile read.
Listen to Becker playing piano on 'Little Tin Box'.
http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/music.html
It may cheer you up after reading the article!
really interesting article, thanks. my mind still boggles at the way science-as-practised and science-as-perceived are so wildy different...
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