A Rule of Three for Public Management Research?

Chris Achen (Princeton) was in College Station last week presenting his provocative argument that political science research needs to focus more on narrowly focused, simple tests and less on elaborate and complicated statistical models.  Somewhat hyperbolically, Achen argues that statistical models should contain no more than three independent variables ("A Rule of Three" -- ART).  Higher dimensional models, Achen suggests, have a number of problems that leave them prone to supporting frail and unreliable inferences. 

As part of the support for this claim, Achen argues that the most important discoveries of political science were derived from nothing more complicated than cross-tabs.   Sometimes, he will go so far as to say that nothing of lasting importance has been learned from more complicated statistical models.  

I have a great deal of sympathy for this approach and will discuss a few aspects of it over the coming weeks. For now, I just wanted to introduce the basic argument.  Do you think that public management research should embrace "a rule of three"? 

You can find a central statement of the critique here.