The alternative is to remain a shriveled pseudo-science

From Conscientious Objections by Neil Postman. Page 17.

And so, the answer to the first question is that by resisting the attractions of pseudo-science, and embracing the role of creators and narrators of social myth, media ecologists can enrich our field of study immeasurably. Of course, this cannot be done without risk. It means that most of us will generate piles of junk — unconvincing stories without credible documentation, sound logic, or persuasive argument. After all, how many Lewis Mumfords or Walter Ongs or Lynn Whites or Jacques Elluls are there? But then, how many Franz Kafkas, D. H. Lawrences, or James Joyces are there? It is a risk that must be borne. The alternative is to remain a shriveled pseudo-science, useless for everything except the assembly line production of Ph.D.s.

As for my second question — What is the purpose of such research? — the answer is not, obviously, to contribute to our field, but to contribute to human understanding and decency. For the most part, novelists do not write to enrich the field of novel-writing. The good ones write because they are angry or curious or cynical or enchanted. The Scarlet Letter was not written by a man who wanted to improve the art of the novel, but by a man who wanted to improve the art of living together. Similarly, The Myth of the Machine, Understanding Media, The Technological Society, Computer Power and Human Reason, Stigma, Anger, Public Opinion, and, if you will pardon an attempt to gilt myself by association, Amusing Ourselves to Death — all these books were written by men and women who were concerned not to improve scholarship but to improve social life. Thus, the purpose of doing this kind of work is essentially didactic and moralistic. These men and women tell their stories for the same reason the Buddha, Confucius, Hillel, and Jesus told their stories. To put it plainly, the so-called social sciences are subdivisions of moral theology. It is true, of course, that social researchers rarely base their claims to knowledge on the indisputability of sacred texts, and even less so on revelation. But you must not be dazzled or deluded by differences in method between preachers and scholars. Without meaning to be blasphemous, I would say that Jesus was as keen a sociologist as Veblen. Indeed, Jesus' remark about rich men, camels, and the eye of a needle is as good a summary of Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class as it is possible to make. As social researchers, Jesus and Veblen differed in that Veblen was more garrulous.