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It's barely a science.
(mander.xyz)
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this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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I'm so tired of this flack that economics gets, that it is somehow "lesser" because it is a "soft science."
Economics does run randomised control trials. Economics does adhere to testable hypotheses. Economics does use rigorous statistics/maths.
You how sometimes grants/government programs are randomly allocated? Those are live, randomised control trials, and if you read the fine print you'll find a project number for researchers studying the effects of rental subsidies, health insurance, etc, one of which being the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment. Those cancerous recommender algorithms, which are the culmination of millions of live A/B tests? Developed by the Econ PhDs poached by Big tech.
Oregon Medicaid health experiment - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Medicaid_health_experiment
It is true that many hypotheses cannot have experiments run. But this makes it even more impressive when economists find natural experiments. For example, the 2021 Nobel Laureates Card, Angrist, and Imbens studied the effects of minimum wage by looking at the towns on the border of New Jersey/New York, which had implemented different minimum wages. They found that increasing minimum wage did not increase unemployment, completely contrary to ahem conservative wisdom.
The Prize in Economic Sciences 2021 - Popular science background - NobelPrize.org - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2021/popular-information/
In contrast, many of the supposed "hard" sciences cannot run experiments either, or also adhere to untestable simplifying assumptions. Ecology, physics, geology (just to name a few) all study systems which are too large and complex to run experiments, yet the general public does not perceive them as "soft".
The difference is that economics is unfortunately one of those fields where lots of unqualified people (read politicians) have lots of strong opinions about, and in turn has a disproportionate influence on everyone. Those criticised austerity measures in the wake of the GFC? That was due to politicians implementing the policies of the infamous "Growth in a Time of Debt" by Reinhart-Rogoff paper, which was published as a "proceeding" and hence not peer reviewed. During the peer review process was found to contain numerous errors including incorrect excel formulas. It didn't matter - policymakers liked the conclusion, and rushed its implementation anyway.
Growth in a Time of Debt - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt
If you look into any awful policy, you will see a similar pattern. Even Milton Friedman, as an ultra hard libertarian for advocated for lowering taxes and abolishing all government benefit programs, recognised that poor people need some assistance, and so actually advocated for replacing benefits with a universal negative income tax (an even more extreme version of UBI). It didn't matter - policymakers of the Reagan Thatcher era heard the lowering taxes and cutting welfare part, and didn't do the UBI.
It's a field full of grifters that get lifted up because they tell rich people what they want to hear.
The Chicago School is the driving force behind the rise of neoliberalism, the movement right of Western democracies, and the return of fascism in America.
Yes, there's good work done in the field. But economists could prove definitively that capitalism is killing us all and that socialism is the only solution to organizing civilisation, and the only economists being platformed would continue to be neoliberal shit heels.
True if your too much of a flunky there's still the Austrian School
Oh don't get me started on the I'm afraid of math Austrian school
Its to economics what flat earth is to physics
I commend your appreciation of the field as a science, but you should also acknowledge that 80% of what's currently taught in the academia about economics is just wrong. Supply and demand (unfalsifiable and shitty predictive capabilities compared to the falsifiable and empirically proven labour theory of value) is just one example in the long list of econ-101 bullshit.
Regardless, as an appreciator of economics, have you checked out econophysics? The study of economics as a thermodynamical system. It's wonderful, with predictive capabilities on for example salary distributions in capitalist economies, Paul Cockshott has a book and a few introductory videos on his YouTube channel
No need to convince me of Econ 101 BS, economists themselves are well aware of it since at least the 1980s. That's why basically every unit of Econ above the 101 level shits on it, and any good Econ 101 shits on itself.
As a general rule of thumb, anything in economics before 1970 basically ran on vibes due to lack of data. Unfortunately, current day undergrad Econ 101 lags at least 20 years behind the current consensus.
That's why the Card, Angrist, and Imbens paper was such a big deal. They used (natural) experimental data, and found out that using Econ 101 supply and demand to study the labour market doesn't work. That's why there's an entire field called labour economics, which is only taught at the graduate level.
Most policymakers probably only learnt Econ 101 maybe 4 decades ago, so they're impression of Econ is probably six decades out of date.
The Death of “Econ 101” - https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/10/the-death-of-econ-101
Psychology too mate. Both use the scientific method, but the premise that all experiments are under full control doesn't apply to them.
it's 90% lobbying and propaganda, 10% math