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There was a piece in the NYTimes Books section last week which seemed quite interestingly to echo our most recent conversation. Field Study: Just How Relevant Is Political Science? "concedes that political science is not quite like the natural sciences. First, the subjects under study 'can argue back'....But.... it uses the same rigorous mechanisms to evaluate observations as any other science." The essay also references the "Perestroika" movement, described a few years ago by Sandy Schram, of our Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research as "working to promote methodological pluralism in the field of political science: this is an 'increasingly mainstreamed' attempt to move beyond conventional 'scientistic, objective, rational choice' analysis of isolated issues in order to situate them in their historical and political contexts."