Turning the tide, or treading water? On the politics of sociological standards

This commentary questions why progress toward more rigorous standards has been so slow 25 years after the creation of the EAS. It argues the problem is structural rather than cognitive: critical and expressive sociology dominate hiring, publishing, and editorial gatekeeping, and their success criteria are largely orthogonal to methodological rigor. It contends that more rapid progress will require not just moral suasion but a more aggressive capture of evaluation infrastructure — journals, funding panels, and editorial boards — alongside greater public visibility for cognitive sociology, since legitimacy in public debate is itself a resource in the competition for academic power.