The paper critically discusses the neoliberal politics of knowledge and the soft normative regime that steers and directs the material condition of existence of educational research, starting from the case of Italy. The fundamental aspects, which regard the form, the ends (and indirectly the content) of a research, are to a substantial degree subtracted from the free determination of the researchers. To speak, therefore, of being rigorous and systematic in educational research means in the first place to investigate the forms and ways in which constituent elements of research come to be constructed in the real interaction between 'governors' (National Agency for the Evaluation of the University System and Research in Italy) and the 'governed' (researchers), marked by the hegemony of the former over the latter. Some consequences of the new game of science are discussed: first, on the researchers themselves; second, on the internal articulation of the tradition of research in the educational research field, in Italy.