Here's something I'm seeing more and more in "woke" research papers: ritualized, emotion-filled confessionals about the authors' "positionality" designed to signal academic rigor.
These aren't actual research methods, although they're often in the Methods section.
In this paper, the section is called "Reflexivity and Rigor."
One author's "experience as a Black, genderfluid, queer clinician and academic" apparently shaped the research questions, while the other authors are described as "white, heterosexual, cisgender women."
Then we get this: "These ongoing dialogues created intentional spaces to question ideas and examine how each author's social location informed their meaning-making."
They also "shared excerpts from analytic memos...which captured the first and second authors' emotional reactions to the transcripts and their analytic insights."
All of this apprently "deepened the authors' understanding of the data and helped to manage bias; thus, ensuring a thoughtfully interrogated analysis."
This is bizarre.
Academic publishing is supposed to minimize bias. That's the whole point of blinded peer review. But instead of concealing the authors' immutable characteristics, these papers foreground the authors' skin color, sexuality, and gender identity.
The authors claim this helps "manage bias," but I suspect it does the opposite.
Instead, it signals to reviewers: We are good, progressive, emotionally empathetic people doing The Work. Please treat us accordingly.