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Economics brings the spherical cow issue to its logical extreme with “efficient markets”
Economics is a funny one as ultimately it’s a focused & technical strand of anthropology (which I believe is considered a science by many) that people often incorrectly lump in with maths.
Kinda tough for an academic to run meaningful experiments on an actual economy though beyond models and simulation. And as anyone who has watched a Gary Stevenson video or two will know, your average academic economist is pretty bad at models and simulations.
Though I guess even bad experiments are still experiments
Edit: typo
Most of them are pretty bad at anthro too tbh lol
Gary Stevenson is also an overconfident blow hard who thinks because he made money on the stock market he knows more than everyone. I’m a psychologist not an economist, I don’t like economics, but this is all still wildly off base from what actually happens in academia. Economist don’t run randomized control trial (RCT) style experiments. They use completely different techniques with different statistical methods to test assumptions. Are these as high quality for causal reasoning as a RCT study? No absolutely not. However I think the average person would be shocked at how much of every field of science does not confirm their studies to that gold standard and how difficult it is to match that exact specific scenario statistically.
The question I always tend to have, when the subject of if economics is or isn’t a science comes up is: given that economies and trade are clearly things that exist (to the extent that any sort of human social interaction exists anyway), and that have measurable properties, it at least ought to be theoretically possible to analyze their behavior using the techniques of science. If you don’t think economics is a science, then if you were to use science to study those things, what field would you consider that work to belong to?
Depends on the question itself.
Economics is scientific. Someone could argue that many aspects of neoclassical economics specifically are not scientific, but the study of economic phenomena would remain a scientific endeavor nonetheless.
Economics is basically social psychology with some numbers sprinkled in.
I struggle to consider it scientific because it bakes in so many fundamental assumptions without questioning them. At least mainstream economics.
Ah, uh, it’s a xkcd. Expanded by a reddit user.
For this reason it seems closer to religion for me
Don’t forget gambling.
… And wishful thinking!
So… religion
No joke: Economists do kind of fulfill the role of priests in that they explain the “necessary [fake] world order” to the masses.
Saying “Capitalism is a bad system” gets you comparable comments from economists as “Gods don’t exist” gets you from priests in a religious society. Both comments also get cops on your ass as well (depending on where you live).
In real life the tax return shows you the best math, or you are fucked.
I always considered economics, philosophy, theology and law as (important) academic subjects which are not sciences.
A PhD is a doctor of philosophy.
Indeed. But the sense of these words changed since they were adopted. Originally they just meant “teacher of general studies”.
I like to think that they evolved in parallel, as Philosophy underpins all interpretations.
