One early definition of feminist research, which was often cited as a mantra was 'feminist research is by women, on women, for women.' [ … ] I have called this mantra a sciolism because it was so superficial. [ … ] The other sciolism was that all positivist or quantitative research methods (treated as synonymous) were 'hard' and masculine, so all feminist research must be interpretivist and/or qualitative, and therefore soft and feminine. This was both insulting to the men who did qualitative research and to women who chose quantitative methods as Jayaratne (1983) argued at the time. Clegg (1985) published a paper which clearly quashed that sciolism, intellectually, but did not of course kill it. Maynard reviews this sciolism and disposes of it.