Reply to post: "The Dismal Science"

R&D money for science – from your taxes?

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"The Dismal Science"

Unfortunately, this term was coined to compare Economics to the arts (at the time known as 'the gay science'), and not to 'hard' science. The term is commonly misunderstood to imply that economics is a science, and it most definitely does not.

Science is the process of making observations, formulating theories, drawing predictions from these, and verifying those predictions. The theories must be consistent with observable facts, have an explainable mechanism, and most importantly, be falsifiable. If you miss just one of these things out, you aren't doing science, you're doing 'magical thinking'. I'm pretty sure that most economic 'theories' are scientific in the same way that I am a multimillionaire. I mean, I bought a lottery ticket, so theoretically...

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