Masha Gessen’s piece, “The Dying Russians” illustrates the ways in which a mix of both qualitative and quantitative data can provide us a more complete picture of the problem. We tend to give our blind faith to numbers. Statistics such as the 30% of deaths from heart disease are harrowing, but it doesn’t explain the causation. Gessen explores the different, more physiological explanations for this statistic, but ultimately makes the point that numbers cannot tell us the full story, as comparative approaches with other countries’ death statistics simply do not add up. In this scenario, Ian Shapiro’s concept of problem-oriented research is well highlighted. Ultimately, it is the cultural, institution, and historical instruments of explanation that allow us to grasp a sense of why the Russians are dying at such alarming rates. Gessen mentions that one woman says that “the difference between current poverty and poverty in the postwar era is that ‘now there are rich folks'”. These personal accounts are paradoxically specific and representative of the Russian experience and the lack of hope that has resulted due to their tragic historical plight. In a way, it seems that we can approach a “truth”, but this “truth” does not lie beyond the grasp of social science. Social science is about attempting to harmonize the qualitative and the quantitative. Gessen’s piece attempts to explain a puzzle and offers us an elegant and poetic explanation. It is not clear to me that such an explanation is objectively less verifiable or valid than a traditional scientific one. Her piece attempts to encompass a population-wide sentiment that not even the Russians can fully understand. Any effort to confront a question of this magnitude with such care is helpful and leads us in the right direction.