From Philip Stephens in the FT this morning:
What circumstance now demands of politicians is the confidence to break free of the defunct, and debunked, economic theorising. Economists are not always wrong; nor does the real problem lie with dodgy data. The mistake comes when policy makers invest the findings of a faith-based discipline with the certainties of science. They would do better to rely on common sense and observed behaviour. By underscoring this fairly simple lesson, the War of the Spreadsheet Coding Error may yet do Europe a huge service.
He's right. The Reinhart-Rogoff faux pas might just, at last, reveal the foolishness of relying on the entirely fake science, poor maths and dogma driven witchcraft of econometrics.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
We’re back to that quasi druidic cult aspiring to don Schifferstadt type golden headwear, but end up wearing white conical (and indeed comical) hats bearing the letter D!
We seem to operating according to a belief system of the 19th Century, Utilitarianism, which is represented by J. S. Mills (?) crazy dictum that everyone pursuing their own happiness results in the collective happiness. begs a million questions and doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny. Happiness? – http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/30/antidepressant-use-england-soars
“The Reinhart-Rogoff faux pas might just, at last, reveal the foolishness of relying on the entirely fake science, poor maths and dogma driven witchcraft of econometrics.”
Come on Richard, tell us what you really think!
I think it’s worth mentioning that all sciences have this problem when they are asked to prescribe public policy. No scientific fact is completely certain. Even the most seemingly cast iron laws are, in principle, revisable and, indeed, sometimes they are. Scientific truth is the product of science as a practical process and that is always ongoing. To cut the process off at any one point and declare debates closed once and for all is not just unscientific, it’s anti-scientific.
Of course, the rub comes with the fact that politicians can’t wait until the end of time to make decisions; at best they can solicit the best evidence available at that particular time. (And they rarely do that.)
So, every science has difficulty translating its findings into politics. Unfortunately that *most* political of sciences, economics, tends to ignore this fact and hide its intrinsically speculative claims under the entirely false aura of objectivity. This is why economics’ ‘physics envy’ is so obnoxious. Firstly, economics, especially that of the aforementioned clowns of austerity, is no physics – for economics to even aspire to be physics is laughable. Secondly, even the core physical theories are subject to revision from time to time.
Since science is intrinsically uncertain it can’t substitute for politics. Only politics can muster the ineradicable degree of arbitrariness needed to make determined decisions in conditions of uncertainty – and the uncertainty in economics is total. Which is why the technocratisation of politics is so lamentable. It’s false in every way possible.
So, it’s not a question of practical knowledge vs. science. Scientific knowledge *is* practical knowledge – it’s the result of knowledge-generating practices and it’s only as solid, sturdy and reliable as those practices themselves. Which is why openness and honesty in scientific practice is absolutely essential (and why R&R should never have been taken seriously because they didn’t make their data or their workings public for years).
Philip
Agreed
Our problem arises when people like my bete noir at Oxford, Mike Devereux, ban me from the Said Business School because I have challenged his claim that all his work is objective
Of course it is not
And that is why economists have driven us into a cul de sac
Richard
Marxism has claimed to be ‘scientific’ – but there the danger is you turn people into robotic entities whose actions are pre/proscribed like none -sentient matter. Now we are faced with the need to create social justice whilst preserving freedom which might mean waiting until the majority want this, if they ever do!
“Scientific truth is the product of science as a practical process and that is always ongoing. To cut the process off at any one point and declare debates closed once and for all is not just unscientific, it’s anti-scientific.”
Precisely. And yet this what many scientists practice today, particularly in areas which are heavily funded by the corporate sector, e.g. Agriculture, medicine, etc, but also in other fields such as archaeology and astronomy/astrophysics. Scientists declare something as truth and God help anyone who claims otherwise. The practice of science today is more an ideal than the reality, particularly where money and egos speak louder than truth.
This is happening particularly strongly in so-called ‘evolutionary psychology’ as presented by Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker et al. I get a sense that these theories of human nature which are presented as truths feed into the contemporary concept of homo economicus and have contributed to an increase viciousness in this area – I think the way we see economics IS the way we see our fellow human.