Getting Old

I'm starting to run out of comments for (or perhaps patience with) my research methods class readings, which frequently involve a couple of papers from a long time ago, more recent papers addressing the same fundamental issues, and in general researchers talking past each other or disagreeing but getting nowhere with it.  Each week we have to submit 2 (or more) substantive discussion "questions" (usually a paragraph each) on the readings.

This week I pretty much want to say, "You know what [other woman in the class] wrote about the first set of readings -- that these issues seem more relevant to the discipline as a whole than to individual researchers? Ditto. While it feels nice to have grad students reading about these philosophical debates, they never seem to be resolved decade after decade, and in any case they seem quite far removed from the issues that are of primary concern to graduate students, post-docs, and assistant professors - to any academic without tenure who is attempting to get it. What we do is what is rewarded, i.e., what gets us published as much as possible in top journals (and/or what gets us grant money and/or what gets us the attention of policy makers, depending on our specific field and orientation). Who controls publication? The current crop of tenured academics who are editors for these journals.  Why don't you guys make up your friggin' minds and let us know what's what here or just admit this is all for funnies or something.  In the meantime, we have our hands full with the many throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks, underpowered, under-thought studies that our advisers are pushing us to complete this semester to use the warm bodies (undergrads) who are easily available to us in the lab."

The prof is pretty much great - enthusiastic, smart, inviting of energetic discussion, all that.  But there are moments like today when this stuff seems about as relevant to my actual work over the next 10-15 years as taking a course in ancient Greek philosophy.

[Note: in case it's not obvious, research methods does not equal stats.  Although there is a great deal of knowledge of stats necessary to understand both the framing of and the details of various debates - e.g., over how various methods lead to biased estimators under various conditions, the issues about Bayesian versus null-hypothesis-testing approaches - we are not learning how to do stats, we don't have math-type homework of any kind, or that kind of thing.  This is all at a higher conceptual level regarding how to do science, if that makes sense.]