The article “Resolving empirical controversies with mechanistic evidence” discusses the potential of using evidence about mechanisms to resolve statistical disagreements and aid in choosing the correct quantitative model. While there are challenges and uncertainties in this approach, it emphasizes the value of theorizing about mechanisms and collecting evidence about them, especially in disciplines like economics.

Many APSA 2016 panels and discussions in the Section on Qualitative and Multimethod Research and the Political Methodology Section were centered on the Data Access and Research Transparency (DART) Initiative (probably worth a blog post of its own). Even panels not explicitly dedicated to DART have digressed into this topic, which includes a short exchange between Tasha Fairfield and me in a panel on causal inference in qualitative research.

More often than one might expect, television series and films offer excellent illustrations of methodological and methods-related arguments (which is worth a blog post of its own). When I was working on my paper on comparative hypothesis testing in process tracing, I was watching the first season of the terrific TV series, Homeland.

The methods literature on process tracing took a Bayesian turn in recent years. Bayesian inference, whereby you condition on evidence in order to update your prior confidence in a hypothesis, is presented as a mode of inference one should follow in process tracing (Bennett, Andrew (2008): Process-Tracing: A Bayesian Perspective. Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M., Henry Brady and David Collier (ed.):

In the case study literature, one new pair of terms has been established by the field that concerns the distinction between data set observations and causal process observations . In short, Collier, Brady, and Seawright (2004: Sources of Leverage in Causal Inference: Toward an Alternative View of Methodology. Brady, Henry E. and David Collier (eds.): Rethinking Social Inquiry.