Others have replied to you with more patience, but I just want to highlight unequivocally that the questions you raise are 1) entirely obvious, and 2) careful

Others have replied to you with more patience, but I just want to highlight unequivocally that the questions you raise are 1) entirely obvious, and 2) carefully studied and discussed in the field, from the first year of undergraduate study all the way to cutting edge research. The fact that you bring none of the pertinent terms to bear makes me think that you have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. I mean, I would not claim to have any special expertise in the field, but I’ve heard the terms “operationalise”, or the criteria “objectivity”, “reliability”, “validity”. > such vague and abstract behaviour descriptions Maybe these terms are not vague and abstract descriptions, but carefully defined and embedded in a comprehensive theory including measurement apparatus? You can safely assum that every single of the terms you mention has had at least, say, five professors and many more PhD students (and their theses) obsess over that term alone, and define and operationalise and measure and validate and embed in the theoretical edifice. (Side Note: That was a big problem in the reception of the Damore memo: many people that had so little understanding of the underlying field that they didn’t even know the Big Five, but felt that they were qualified to weigh in, and evidently misinterpreted many things, for example what “neuroticism” means.) Just to reiterate: the questions you raise are enormously important and difficult and, sure, in parts controversial. What annoys me though is that your comment sounds as if you assume that researchers in the field have not grappled with them, when in fact they have, carefully and comprehensively, for over a century!