It's interesting how the old dogs' network hangs together. However, in their sweeping criticism of mediocrity (who would argue that mediocrity is not mediocre?), doctoral committees (other, we assume, than their own), and (youthful) graduate student research (again, other than their own students), they promote a rear-view mirror approach to gatekeeping--as if innovation were in-and-of-itself mediocre. They want to perpetuate the old positivist view of a single, correct path to knowledge and, while denying it, call for a regurgitation of the long-dead debate concerning an artificial distinction. If you think what you are doing should be called "qualitative" research, call it that. If you think what you are doing should be called "quantitative" research, call it that. Just make sure what you do is "quality" research. But at the same time, don't condemn research that does not fall to one side or the other of an artificial divide in the name of pseudoscience, old age, and a disdain for doctoral committees who support innovative student research. All research involves observation, abstraction, counting, analysis, characterization, and interpretation. Research should be rigorous and systematic. It does not need to be "generalizable." (Why would you want to rule out the study of unique or unusual phenomena?) Researchers, above all, should have open minds. Research takes many forms and is not practiced exclusively by instructional technologists wearing blindfolds. Look around.