system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Case studies are inherently flawed and are ultimately inferior to scientific studies. CMV

So on issues social in nature, the first thing a lot of individuals do is throw down on some case study or other to reinforce their point. I don't find there to be any value in case studies due to the volatile nature of how data is collected from them, even leaving in standard deviation and margin for error, every case study ultimately leaves out any concept that undermines it in favor of enforcing it's goal to the extent that I think it bears no real credibility. That is to say in laymen's terms, it's just really complicated "He says, She says" nonsense.

Some examples of this are the following:

Wage gaps.

Hiring statistics.

The impact of the smart phone on social interaction.

The only thing case studies can glean from such arguments is that people have "motivations for doing something." Which is ultimately common sense.



Scientific studies on the other hand, offer indubitable proof of the matter at hand. Now I know that on issues of a social nature you can't really have a scientific study really comment on anything, but my point is that people pay too much credence to case studies because of emotional attachment to the issue at hand and for no other reason than that.

CMV if you please.
gpt
For the examples you listed, case studies would probably be inappropriate. For other situations, say, an uncommon/complex mental health problem like Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly "Multiple Personality Disorder"), case studies or other qualitative research methods can add to our understanding of overwhelmingly complicated phenomena. (In cases where the phenomenon of interest is very rare, case studies and similar methods may be the only options!) 

Whether you should use quantitative or qualitative research methods also depends on the kind of question you're trying to answer. If you want to ask "How big is the wage gap?", you should use a quantitative study. If you want to know what is it like to be a female engineer in the US, you'll get useful data using qualitative methods. As a side note, case studies can examine multiple subjects so you could interview a handful of female engineers and look for common themes in their experiences.

Qualitative and quantitative methods can complement one another in exploring a topic. However, they sometimes have different purposes. If you want to design educational materials for aspiring female engineers, or write a textbook chapter about sexual harassment in the workplace, qualitative studies will help. If you want to push for a policy change, quantitative is usually the way to go. :)