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It is often opined here on Soylent that Economics isn't real science. You would expect economists to disagree with that sentiment, but it turns out that there is a growing international movement within the world of economics itself, started by a group of students, that seeks to drastically overhaul the entire field. Some choice quotes from the article, which is in fact a review of a book "which formalises and expands the case" that economics is in need of reform:
In the autumn of 2011, as the world's financial system lurched from crash to crisis, the authors of this book began, as undergraduates, to study economics. While their lectures took place at the University of Manchester the eurozone was in flames. The students' first term would last longer than the Greek government. Banks across the west were still on life support. And David Cameron was imposing on Britons year on year of swingeing spending cuts.
Yet the bushfires those teenagers saw raging each night on the news got barely a mention in the seminars they sat through, they say: the biggest economic catastrophe of our times "wasn't mentioned in our lectures and what we were learning didn't seem to have any relevance to understanding it", they write in The Econocracy. "We were memorising and regurgitating abstract economic models for multiple-choice exams."
Part of this book describes what happened next: how the economic crisis turned into a crisis of economics. It deserves a good account, since the activities of these Manchester students rank among the most startling protest movements of the decade.
After a year of being force-fed irrelevancies, say the students, they formed the Post-Crash Economics Society, with a sympathetic lecturer giving them evening classes on the events and perspectives they weren't being taught. They lobbied teachers for new modules, and when that didn't work, they mobilised hundreds of undergraduates to express their disappointment in the influential National Student Survey. The economics department ended up with the lowest score of any at the university: the professors had been told by their pupils that they could do better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2017, @04:41AM
Sigh...
Another semantic debate. Oh goody: this should be informative.
Let's begin with the dictionary:
SCIENCE
the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
Economics studies the behavioural patterns of humans. It is science. Good, that is out of the way.
You are describing the scientific method and saying everything else is not science which is WRONG. (feel free to lose you shit at this point if necessary - I have done this before and am immune)
Is it typically "good" science compared to other fields? Not really. But then neither is theoretical physics, psychology and a whole host of others.
The only real questions that matter are:
1) Could we REALISTICALLY do a lot better (as a field) or is this as good as it gets for now?
2) Are we deriving anything useful from this process?
3) Is this expanding our knowledge of the thing being studied in any meaningful way?
If you answer yes to all three then as far as I, and apparently most of the world, are concerned then it is a perfectly valid form of science. If you answer yes to either 2 or 3 then you are still ok. A not to 1 means you need to up your game.
Sometimes you CANNOT apply the scientific method in a meaningful way. (e.g. studying dinosaurs) And even if you can do SOME experiments (eg. UBI in Iceland) they don't always give you anything better results than what you are complaining about.
I know the anal retentives will be frothing at the mouth but tough shit. Loosen the sphincter.