Breaking off so we don't derail this thread any further, I thought I'd press Seth (and anyone who agrees with him) on the subject.

Part of the source of disagreement is probably just our definition of qualitative and quantitative. To me it's one of those things best defined by exclusion - quantitative analysis is taking whatever figures you have relating to a topic, subjecting them to statistical analysis, and noting down some subset of the predictive conclusions. Qualitative is basically doing anything else.

So when Seth says 'a lot of it is intensely empirical' (depending on what he means by empirical), I would prob describe what he's calling qualitative research as partially quantitative. I don't want to put words in his mouth, so I'll wait for Seth or someone else to decide whether they're reasonably happy with my definition (the quantitative side could certainly do with some tightening, but I think it gives a decent starting point), and then to tell me what, if anything, they think is the value of what I've categorised as qualitative research.

I basically believe that research has epistemological value in proportion to its quantitative content, where epistemological value is necessary but insufficient to provide practical (utilitarian) value. Ie any research with no quantitative element is worthless, though obviously lots of quantitative research will be, too.

By research here, I mean collecting and analysing data, not merely proposing new ways of thinking about data we already have, as philosophers and mathematicians generally do.

Social science qualitative research can be useful for getting ideas of what quantitative research to do next. Other than this I largely agree with you. To me the main problem with pure qualitative research is that you can't draw any general conclusions from it.