Standards in sociology: Agreeing on principles, disagreeing on ambition

Aksoy, Manzo, Birkelund, and Raub have written a thoughtful and well-argued position statement. I agree with most of what they say. My comment is not, therefore, primarily a disagreement but a question about actionable consequences. The three principles they advance — integration of theory and empirics, open science, and engagement with societal debates — are defensible. The problem is what the statement does with them. At each point where the argument reaches an operational conclusion, the language is strong — institutions “must establish” the conditions necessary to sustain open science, the community “should demand” sociology to be open — but the content of the demand is left unspecified. This is a statement that agrees with its own principles but declines to press them.