Faculty Fellow Michael Desch (political science) wrote an article for The Chronicle for Higher Education about the growing irrelevance of political science research for informing policy making decisions.  He says, "The problem, in a nutshell, is that scholars increasingly privilege rigor over relevance."  This rigor often takes the form of statistical modeling and moves away from qualitative methodology.  Desch urges political scientists to consider the value of their research questions for bettering society as a whole, rather than simply advancing the discipline.