Reality exists in the empirical world and not in the methods used to study that world; it is to be discovered in the examination of that world. … Methods are mere instruments designed to identify and analyse the obdurate character of the empirical world, and as such their value exists only in their suitability in enabling this task to be done. In this fundamental sense the procedures employed in each part of the act of scientific enquiry should and must be assessed in terms of whether they respect the nature of the empirical world under study – whether what they signify or imply to be the nature of the empirical world is actually the case

Herbert J. Blumer (1969) Symbolic Interactionism, pp.27-8.

A British newspaper reporter moves from the politics to the business desk. She resolves to start digging into the background of Russian oligarchs who have set up home in London. She believes she can connect them to the kleptomaniac dictators the revolutionaries in the Middle East are challenging. She has criticized the Brit politicians without fear of the consequence for years, but her editor turns pale when she talks about using the same tactic against plutocrats. The smallest factual mistake or unsupportable innuendo could lead to a libel action that could cost the paper a million pounds, ‘and we don’t have a million pound.’ She ploughs on, and produces an article that is so heavily cut and rewritten by the in-house lawyers no one can understand it. ‘I want a thousand words on the trends in fashion retailing by lunchtime,’ the editor says when she starts working the next day.

 You Can’t Read This Book, Nick Cohen (2012).