Hey Sociologists (and other social-scientists), here’s what fancy-schmancy New York Times journalists think of your sister-profession:

Generally speaking, political writers don’t think so much of political scientists, either, mostly because anyone who has ever actually worked in or covered politics can tell you that, whatever else it may be, a science isn’t one of them. Politics is, after all, the business of humans attempting to triumph over their own disorder, insecurity, competitiveness, arrogance, and infidelity; make all the equations you want, but a lot of politics is simply tactile and visual, rather than empirical. My dinnertime conversation with three Iowans may not add up to a reliable portrait of the national consensus, but it’s often more illuminating than the dissertations of academics whose idea of seeing America is a trip to the local Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Ouch. The poly-sci tizzy starts here.

What I don’t get is why a solid, well-respected writer like Bai…whose articles I use in my classes from time to time, needs to go on some rant about an entire discipline? He sounds like he’s on the Jim Rome show. All he needed to do is end his passage by saying “rack ’em…I’m the pimp in the box!” Actually he could be making and interesting critique about our overemphasis on positivist/deductive approaches at the expense of inductive/interpretivist approaches (which can be just as rigorous and systematic), but instead of going there, he decides to “zing” an entire discipline instead of being reflective about its strengths and weaknesses. When New York Times feature writers are going for the verbal “smackdown,” I fear for our public discourse.

Rack ’em!