If physicists could interview quarks and ask them questions that would help them uncover new paradigms and conduct new, more productive experiments, they would do it.

Physicists are strictly etic out of sheer necessity. Consequently, they have gotten really good at working around this limitation — but again, not because this is an intrinsically superior approach, but because there’s no other option available.

Meanwhile some social researchers, who have the advantage of being able to converse freely with those they are researching, not only fail to do so, but actually take pride in renouncing this advantage. It makes them feel rigorous because they resemble the hard sciences.