Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of theoretical paradigms Just as the later structural functionalists he would inspire, such as Radcliffe-Brown, Durkheim's scientific foundations led to a methodological strength. By focusing on understanding a single aspect of society, such as the division of labor or suicide rates, Durkheim could focus on empirical data to create a testable hypothesis based on statistics. This makes it easy to refute and/or refine the claims he makes, but it also makes them easier to compare cross-culturally to see if variations exist. There are some flaws in Durkheim's thinking. One small flaw is that Durkheim failed to collect his own data, using external sources collected by others. Furthermore, Durkheim has been criticized for his failure to adequately take the individual into account. This can be seen in a flaw in his legendary sociological work, Suicide. Many criticized Durkheim for attempting to explain microevents using macrostatistics; however, Van Poppel and Day (1996) state that this is not an error, but rather an empirical error as the way suicides were described by Protestants and Catholics were described differently, which Durkheim failed to explain.