An important distinction. I studied history and international relations to postgrad level at an "elite" institution. As much as anyone, I see value in this rese

An important distinction. I studied history and international relations to postgrad level at an "elite" institution. As much as anyone, I see value in this research (having done it myself). But it is also important to understand the propensity for humans to make bombastic claims about their own work (which ends up saying, justifiably, that is all total bullshit). Btw, I think this is equally true of research outside the social sciences...but there is just far more scope to engage in puffery within the social sciences and, unfortunately, people are often far too lazy to counteract it. It isn't even about data or the distinction between hard and soft...if you can make a solid argument that is justified and you have no data (which is sometimes the case) then fine. The issue is that, in most areas, the evidence doesn't justify any clear conclusion. Again, you see this in harder sciences where the title is eye-catching, the data less so (often in proportion to the nonsense in the title). Areas like "peace building" and "conflict resolution", mentioned in the article, are deeply political areas. In my opinion, they rarely do much to advance human knowledge. For example, as the article inadvertently shows, peace building is explicitly based on the idea that democracies are best because they don't attack each other. Sounds great...but there is no data to support this conclusion.