Multilitteratus Incognitus

There must be some cosmic signals that have gone off line the bat-signal indicating that I am 'free' because I am waiting for feedback from my dissertation committee.  How do I know this?  Well, the requests for me to peer review articles has increased!   Not wanting to disappoint, if the article is within my field of "expertise" (whatever that means... the more I learn, the more Socrates whispers at me "the more you know, you know that you know nothing" ;-) ) One thing I don't like doing is outwardly rejecting an article.  I don't just approve articles, but if an article has some  merit (even if authors have to do a ton of work to rehab it), I reject but keep the door open for reconsideration.  I have outwardly rejected articles in the past, but I'd estimate that it's only 25% rejection (another 50% needs major revision, and 25% minor revisions).  Despite trying to be a caring reviewer, and honestly striving to give good feedback, the

 Alfonso Bedoya in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Dissertation proposal, draft number...I don't know - lost count - has been submitted.  Things look good, well at least in my humble view, so I hope I am ready to defend this proposal within the coming month and become a "candidate" soon‡. With the draft submitted I can now focus on the other pile of academic work that needs attending to, and is more collaborative than my dissertation. In any case, a recent incident (incident sound too austere...happening? occurrence?) I was reminded, for the umpteenth time that what we, as educational researchers, are expected to have a purpose in our research. What is the rationale for the study?  people ask. Why undertake this study?  Who benefits? What is the problem you are trying to solve? As you can tell from the title of this blog post I hold the position that I don't need no stinkin' rationale. I could make something up like "by examining population X,