Bureaucratisation de la recherche et confusion entre chercheur et expert.

Priority research topics tend to be decided outside of the scientific field, favouring the rise, within social sciences, of “abstract empiricism” (Wright Mills 2006), i.e. detailed researches that carefully avoid theorization or generalization — such as the work consultant firms do. A possible justification of this tendency is the objectivity that is allegedly expected from the researcher. A second argument relies on a simplistic view of the epistemological rupture and the confusion between intellectual rigour and reluctance to theorize. [...]