[torrance]

I would add to this list economics.

Oxford Economist Kate Raeworth has made the exact same argument about her own discipline and the allure of the ‘hardness’ of maths and physics. The way early 20th century increasingly turned to Newtonian-like mechanistic descriptions of economic processes, reductionist and absurd ideas about ‘human nature’, and extracting Universal laws from historical and accidental correlations.

I do recommend reading the first half of her Doughnut Economics where she makes this case at length, from someone inside the discipline.

[selectionbias]

I admit I haven't read or even heard of Kate Raeworth, but I am an academic economist. Most modern economic research is empirical, a paper poses a policy-relevant empirical question 'did policy X reduce unemployment' and then empirical evidence is presented (perhaps using data from a randomly controlled trial or using quasi-experimental variation). The statistics are calculated and the assumptions required for the validity of the statistical analysis discussed critically and at great length. Undergraduate econ classes unfortunately leave students with the impression that academic econ is mostly unrealistic theoretical models of behavior, but those models are just handy tools for hypothesis formation, and it is the empirical testing of hypotheses that makes a discipline a science, not the manner by which those hypotheses were formed.

[kunfuu]

Hypothesis driven research disregarding rigoriousness of hypothesis formation is most often flawed, as the hypotheses will be filled with suspicious/flawed concepts that cannot serve as reliable and meaningful abstraction of reality.

Consider the measures prefixed with 'real', for example, 'real wage'. The concept of 'real wage' isn't meaningless, since it captures the relation between wage and purchasing power when inflation is involved. But what about cases where inflation is not involved, or cases where we need to consider interactions between some other factors and inflation? In those cases, the concept of 'real wage' is often impedimental and misleading, a ratio indicating purchasing power would surely be a better choice.

Consider the concept of 'equilibrium'. I can hardly see any empirical foundation of 'equilibrium' when it's invoked by empirical economics research. There are stationary periods of prices. But it's a different story to interpret such stationariness as a state of equilibrium with a mysterious process forcing prices to always gravitate to this state. This interpretation is without empirical foundation and yet its reliability is often assumed a priori in the research.

If you are not persuaded, it's okay. Regardless, I don't believe hypothesis formation is irrelevant.

EDIT: On second thought, my case against 'real wage' above was missing the key. The key is that purchasing power is what matters, and the purchasing power (most of the time local) of stock variables (e.g. savings) is what matters. To adjust flow variables by inflation is often misleading.

[selectionbias]

Well, at the very least, the argument over hypothesis formation is not specific to economics. The philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that science should aim to empirically falsify hypotheses, and that the way scientists develop those hypotheses, while an interesting psychological question, is irrelevant for the scientific method. He argued that hypothesis formation always contains an element of irrationality and instinct and he quotes Einstein who expressed views to that effect.

[andi999]

Thats great. What about reproduction of results? Are ppl doing this (so is there funding for this)?

[heisenbit]

The work on reproduction of empirical economics so far has stalled due to lack of funding for a time machine.

[atq2119]

To be fair, there is good economics out there - not as solid as the sciences of course, because the subject matter is more complex, but it does exist.

The main problem with the role of economics in society is that economics, and often pseudo-economics, are used to influence politics in a biased way.

Economists need to start strict self-policing and disavowing all the dishonest actors in political think tanks. It's difficult to do in practice because some of the dishonest actors get a lot of funding from political interests, but if economists want their discipline to earn respect as a science, they do need to clean up their act in this regard.

[andreilys]

Yeah, it still baffles me that people think economics is a proven science and not built on a shaky foundation that falls apart soon as you prod it.

[selectionbias]

Look at the latest edition of QJE. You will see mostly studies addressing a particular policy question, e.g., 'what was the effect of this policy change on unemployment' which they answer using randomly controlled trials or quasi-experimental methods. Which aspect of this falls apart when you prod it?

[andreilys]

I was more thinking of top economists like Alan Greenspan and his comments about having banished volatility, followed shortly after by the '08 crash.

Much of economics is politics disguised as technocracy.

[FranzFerdiNaN]

Of course it is. Economics uses to be called political economy for a reason. The idea that economics can be considered separately from politics is laughable.

[TheOtherHobbes]

What's a "quasi-experimental method" and how do you do randomly controlled trials on entire countries?

[selectionbias]

Quasi-experimental variation refers to situations in which assignment of treatments is 'as good as random' but treatments weren't assigned by the researchers in an RCT. A classic example is Angrist and Lavy https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

[scollet]

Do you think there is a factor of unknowns in both economics and humanities (disparate) that challenge scientific study? I.e. humanities and a further extension of art is currently immeasurable. If this sounds like a loaded question, I don't know how to phrase it correctly.

[aww_dang]

AKA, "The dismal science"

[Aunche]

Not all economics is macroeconomics...