The academy's zeitgeist--standards of scientic investigation--has recently come to the fore in the national arena as the dominant moral and intellectual framework for educational research. In this article, we explore the re-emergence of standards of scientific investigation as a significant shaping force in education and the scholarly culture, particularly in regard to the fields of leadership and administration. With the recent advent of politically based decrees of quality defined exclusively by traditional standards, alternative approaches to exploring human issues, however rigorous they might be in the qualitative realm, tend to be marginalized. Traditional, experimental studies that involve large-scale statistical research design and randomization have been authorized, making single-subject research, naturalistic inquiry, self-study, and other qualitative research practices unlikely candidates for federal funding. For this discussion on "authorized" and "unauthorized" perspectives of research, we explore the impact of regulatory practices within the academy.