 Methods may also carry value commitments—another reason for reflecting on their use. Quantitative methods in the social sciences are aimed at providing information about average effects in large populations. When evidence is constrained by an epistemological commitment to a method that only allows for evidence of average effects, then the method itself may result in treating characteristics of particular individuals as irrelevant. The methods force the disappearance of differences which may be relevant with the result that they may de-value minority populations or individuals. Methods that produce evidence of average effects threaten to have a disproportionate impact on those who are who are not “average” in the requisite sense.