Trump unleashed on Nobel Prize-winning economist and ex-NYT columnist Paul Krugman as a “deranged BUM” for articles panning his tariffs regime.
  • Hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    1·
    5 days ago

    Call it what it is, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

    Alfred Nobel made awards for 5 fields. Economics is not one of them. Economists invented their own prize with Nobel’s name somewhere in the title to try and trick people into thinking its a real science. The headline is wrong and should be corrected to read:

    Trump Goes Nuclear on Riksbank Prize-Winning Economist Paul Krugman Over Tariffs Jab: ‘Deranged BUM’

      • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
        1·
        4 days ago

        Its a science but its actual experimental data (eg: real science) is a small fraction of the field and relatively new.

        Also, much like other humanities sciences… There’s been the alarming discovery that much of what is taken for granted by earlier studies and applied at scale worldwide, is bunk - or at least very flawed. https://theconversation.com/the-replication-crisis-has-engulfed-economics-49202

        So you can forgive people for being dismissive.

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
          1·
          11 hours ago

          Karl Popper came up with his criteria for what constitutes science specifically to discredit “soft” sciences, largely because, as an extreme conservative, he didn’t like their conclusions. Like psychology, early work in economics was not experimental in nature, and also like psychology, there are some tricky ethical issues with conducting many experiments. However, economic modeling has reasonably good (and proven) predictive power in many cases, so it’s not just handwavey bullshit. And I’m not an economist trying to defend my turf, I’m a computer guy with a mathematical modeling and physics background, both in my education and in work experience.

          And just to put things in perspective: astrophysics also has many important but non-replicable results. So does paleontology. As does biology. It’s tricky to cause a new Big Bang, build a black hole, or restart evolution. So be dismissive if you like, but replicability is difficult in any social science, and that doesn’t mean that those sciences are a waste of time.