Andrew Gelman — The role of models and empirical work in political science

I’m more and more becoming convinced of Dan Kahan’s idea that the paradigmatic task of empirical science is not the testing of hypotheses but the gathering of data in order to distinguish between competing models of the world.

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
The role of models and empirical work in political science
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University