5 Comments

Oh yeah, wash your hands regularly. ;D

Expand full comment

History of science is littered with failed theories, methods, and research programs. This seems to be pretty standard.

If you want an account of how or why a scientific theory is eventually overturned, there's some good history and philosophy of science out there. I recommend Popper and Kuhn as good foundational texts (particularly, Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

Economics for the last 50 or so years has been trying to become more of a science than a philosophy. They might be more self-reflective than other disciplines, but that's not obvious to me.

When you say science is broken, do you mean?

1. Scientific method broken: Popperian falsification tied to Kuhn's paradigm-shift vs. normal incremental science set up are the wrong criteria for scientific truth?

2. Scientists have diverged from the scientific method due maybe to poor institutional design and perhaps unchecked biases?

Expand full comment

Science is broken. We need some science about where science fails. Could an economist do that? Sometimes it can just the that simple.

Expand full comment

This is just another example of a ridiculous post. I'm washing my hands of this blog. Oh, wait. :-)

Expand full comment

Washing hands also makes you more lenient in moral judgement.

Does cleanliness just reduce confidence in all decisions?

Expand full comment