We must rescue social science research from obscurity

Why don't you bite the bullet on this matter and simply say that less research should be funded until more of it has been properly read? After all, the main problem with academic research is not that it's largely irrelevant but that it's largely unread. The fact that people do/publish research just to score hits to boost their careers doesn't necessarily mean that what they're saying is rubbish. However, the fact that we know that this is why they do/publish research means that we quickly dismiss/ignore such work unless we too are invested in the same career strategy. The relatively cheap solution to this problem would be to fund people to read research across a wide range of areas and come up with some interesting testable hypotheses that bring the different strands together. At least, we should make a substantive exercise of this kind as a precondition to receiving research funding.

As a former full time academic and current adjunct, I agree wholeheartedly with what you say here. You especially hit the nail on the head here: "...he whole of society suffers because its most burning issues go unaddressed by social science researchers preoccupied with discovering tiny gaps in the literatures of their sub-specialisms and pretending to fill them, adding to the glut of nonsense that stops the few truly original and meaningful publications from being noticed, discussed and acted upon." I disagree with the above comment. I read a lot of research and most of it is indeed irrelevant. It was clearly only conducted so as to add to someone's vita. When are academics in positions of power in academia going to stop valuing "number of publications" over more important contributions to one's field?