Anyhow, I won't argue with you as to whether there has been a lot or little number crunching going on or whether academia should be results oriented.
It sounds like a productive argument to have, as far as I'm concerned - since most of your premises do hinge upon these position statements that you're making.
And it is my goal to produce relevant results in the field of Internet Research, without conceptualising/ hallucinating, without using geek speak, but producing results that are efficient, able to be understood by every English speaking person on the planet and published widely by the media for the benefit of the public - and my results will be relevant.
What are your criteria for relevancy of research? upon what data are you basing your evaluation of internet research as less than acceptably numerical? (or less than empirically grounded, I think many of us might say...) And when did 'conceptualizing' come to imply hallucination? I think I've missed something crucial, here .... elijah