Agenda pushing or science?

Comment on Bob of Jan 20 on ‘Against anti-economics’

Blog-Reference

To speak of economics in the singular is misleading because there is political and theoretical economics. The main differences are:
(i) The goal of political economics is to push an agenda; the goal of theoretical economics is to explain how the actual economy works.
(ii) In political economics, anything goes; in theoretical economics, scientific standards are observed.

Theoretical economics has to be judged according to the criteria true/false and nothing else: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum, 1991, p. 30)

Economists do not have the true theory because they are scientifically incompetent. This means that their economic policy proposals have no sound theoretical foundation. Ultimately, this means that economists have no legitimacy whatever to speak in the name of science. What they bring to the table is roughly at the same level as Joe Sixpack’s opinion. This applies to Walrasians, Keynesians, Marxians, and Austrians.

You say, “As both Marx and Keynes point out, capitalism is not chiefly about production for consumption but rather increasing capitalists’ wealth. It’s not C―M―C’ in a barter economy with money as a veil as classical and neoclassical economics assumed but rather M―C―M’ (money for the sake of more money) in a monetary economy, as Marx and Keynes analyzed.”

This is a good example of the abysmal scientific level of economics. Both Marx’s and Keynes’ profit theory is provably false (2014; 2011). Both approaches are scientifically worthless. But for agenda-pushing, they are good enough and they still have some entertainment value in political sitcoms or economics blogs.

The Classicals called themselves Political Economists and Adam Smith developed his economic theory in order to support his political agenda. This is not how science proceeds. A genuine scientist tries to figure out how the economy works. His goal is the true theory — not less, not more. A genuine scientist refrains from agenda-pushing.

All this is the exact opposite of what economists actually do. Neither Walrasians, nor Keynesians, nor Marxians, nor Austrians have the true theory. In fact, what they have developed thus far is proto-scientific garbage. Yet this does not hinder them to pester the world with ill-founded proposals/advice and feeding their students with theories/models that a provably false.

Political economics is anti-science, because of this, genuine scientists are anti-economics.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


References
Kakarot-Handtke, E. (2011). Why Post Keynesianism is Not Yet a Science. SSRN Working Paper Series, 1966438: 1–20. URL
Kakarot-Handtke, E. (2014). Profit for Marxists. SSRN Working Paper Series, 2414301: 1–25. URL
Stigum, B. P. (1991). Toward a Formal Science of Economics: The Axiomatic Method in Economics and Econometrics. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Immediately preceding It’s not the ideology, it’s the methodology, stupid!.

***

REPLY You got the point — at least almost, comment on Luis Enrique of Jan 22

You say “If you are going to try to do something which amounts to ‘you [orthodox] economists are doing something extremely fundamental all wrong’ you have to motivate that *extremely* well and show something in the data that really cannot be explained by the existing approach but can be by yours.”

Equilibrium economics is fundamentally all wrong and you can have as much proof as you wish: “At long last, it can be said that the history of general theory from Walras to Arrow-Debreu has been a journey down a blind alley, and it is historians of economic thought who seem to have finally hammered down the nails in this coffin. (Blaug, 2001, p. 160), see also (Ingrao et al., 1990; Ackerman et al., 2004)

According to the rules of science, the orthodox approach is refuted. Period. Nothing left to do. But economists either do not understand the rules or they ignore them: “In economics we should strive to proceed, wherever we can, exactly according to the standards of the other, more advanced, sciences, where it is not possible, once an issue has been decided, to continue to write about it as if nothing had happened. (Morgenstern, 1941, p. 369)

Methodologically speaking it is inadmissible to take equilibrium and the behavioral assumption of constrained optimization into the set of axioms. Or, put the other way round, you have to do economics without these assumptions. In brief: “There is another alternative: to formulate a completely new research program and conceptual approach. As we have seen, this is often spoken of, but there is still no indication of what it might mean.” (Ingrao et al., 1990, p. 362)

Has Orthodoxy an indication of what this might mean? No idea! The fly flies unremittingly against the window glass as before: “most of what I and many others do is sorta-kinda neoclassical because it takes the maximization-and-equilibrium world as a starting point” (Krugman).

The future has no place for Krugman and nothing-has-happened-neoclassicals and dull Econ 101 students who accept supply-demand-equilibrium as a scientific explanation of how markets function.


References
Ackerman, F., and Nadal, A. (Eds.) (2004). Still Dead After All These Years: Interpreting the Failure of General Equilibrium Theory. London, New York: Routledge.
Blaug, M. (2001). No History of Ideas, Please, We’re Economists. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 15(1): 145–164.
Ingrao, B., and Israel, G. (1990). The Invisible Hand. Economic Equilibrium in the History of Science. Cambridge, London: MIT Press.
Morgenstern, O. (1941). Professor Hicks on Value and Capital. Journal of Political Economy, 49(3): 361–393. URL

Following Time to come up to speed.

Why the Naked-Emperor Zombie cannot die

Comment on Lars Syll on ‘Deep parameters and microfoundations’

Blog-Reference

All thinking economists agree: orthodox economics is, as Keen famously put it, a naked emperor (2011), or as Quiggin put it, a zombie (2010). This calamity is well advanced in years “As will become evident, there is more agreement on the defects of orthodox theory than there is on what theory is to replace it: but all agreed that the point of the criticism is to clear the ground for construction.” (Nell, 1980, p. 1)

The list of defects is indeed almost endless — and exactly this is the problem. As a matter of methodological principle, the proof of one inconsistency is enough to refute a theory, as we know from Popper and from a well-known anecdote: When Einstein was told of the publication of a book entitled, ‘100 Authors Against Einstein’, he replied: "Why one hundred? If I were wrong, one would have been enough." (Wikipedia)

Unfortunately, Lars Syll has not yet gotten the point, but repeats the multitude of already known defects. The ‘agreement on the defects of orthodox theory’ is the hallmark of Heterodoxy since Veblen, yet this has obviously not been enough to break the stalemate. Something is missing.

The curious fact is that Keynes already pointed the way: “For if orthodox economics is at fault, the error is to be found not in the superstructure, which has been erected with great care for logical consistency, but in a lack of clearness and of generality in the premises.” (1973, p. xxi)

These premises are well-known for more than 150 years: “For it would not be too much of an oversimplification to present the field as having progressed smoothly and steadily, developing theories of ever greater power and broader scope within an essentially unchanged explanatory framework, based on the concepts of optimizing individual behavior and market equilibrium, that were already central to economic thought in the previous century.” (Woodford, 1999, p. 2)

Or, in the blog version of Krugman: “most of what I and many others do is sorta-kinda neoclassical because it takes the maximization-and-equilibrium world as a starting point”. These are the crucial analytical ‘deep parameters’, a.k.a axioms, all the rest is to a greater or lesser extent decoration. There is no need at all to bother with the silliness of the numerous auxiliary assumptions.

Now, constrained optimization and equilibrium are nonentities and therefore not admissible as axioms. #1 This is the methodological silver bullet, and more is not needed to put the DSGE zombie at rest. All models that are axiomatically based on maximization and equilibrium are false by implication.

This clears the ground, next comes the all-decisive part: construction. What is desperately needed is a replacement, that is, a formally and materially consistent approach that is not axiomatically based on maximization and equilibrium but on something more solid. This is not an easy task. “A new idea is extremely difficult to think of. It takes a fantastic imagination.” (Feynman, 1992, p. 172)

Sad to witness that After-Keynesians still hallucinate that the motto ‘it is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong!’ is a smart substitute for the fantastic imagination of a Paradigm Shift.

The methodological key point of the brain-dead microfoundations issue is: Orthodoxy has to be criticized for defending the indefensible, Heterodoxy has to be criticized for a lack of imagination. Because that is why economics is scientifically late since Jevons/Walras/ Menger.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


References
Feynman, R. P. (1992). The Character of Physical Law. London: Penguin.
Keen, S. (2011). Debunking Economics. London, New York: Zed Books, rev. edition.
Keynes, J. M. (1973). The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Vol. VII. London, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Nell, E. J. (1980). Growth, Profits, and Property, chapter Cracks in the Neoclassical Mirror: On the Break-Up of a Vision, 1–16. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
Quiggin, J. (2010). Zombie Economics. How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Woodford, M. (1999). Revolution and Evolution in Twentieth-Century Macroeconomics. Mimeo, 1–32. URL

#1 Axiomatized NONENTITIES and the failure of methodologists

It’s not the ideology, it’s the methodology, stupid!

Comment on Chris Dillow on ‘Against anti-economics’

Blog-Reference

You say “ideological attacks upon mainstream economics misunderstand how economics progresses.”

This is a misrepresentation of the ongoing discussion. The critical point to realize first is that economics in effect stagnates “... we know little more now about ‘how the economy works,’ or about the modus operandi of the invisible hand than we knew in 1790, after Adam Smith completed the last revision of The Wealth of Nations.” (Clower)

The main reason for the dismal state of economics is scientific incompetence. Accordingly, the critique of Wren-Lewis as a proponent of DSGE is not ideological but methodological.

In order to make the point at issue transparent, it is of utmost importance to distinguish between political and theoretical economics. The main differences are
(i) The goal of political economics is to push an agenda, the goal of theoretical economics is to explain how the actual economy works.
(ii) In political economics anything goes; in theoretical economics, scientific standards are observed.

Theoretical economics has to be judged according to the criteria true/false and nothing else. The history of political economics, on the other hand, can be summarized as the perpetual violation of well-defined scientific standards.

The fact of the matter is that theoretical economics has from the very beginning been dominated by the agenda pushers of political economics. Smith and Mill fought for Liberalism, Marx and Keynes were agenda pushers, so were Hayek and Friedman, and so are Krugman and Varoufakis.

Political economics is scientifically worthless. At the moment, orthodox economics does not satisfy scientific criteria, neither does Heterodoxy. For the detailed arguments see The creative destruction of Wren-Lewis and Economists’ last Hurrah.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

***

ICYMI  What is economics?

Neither Classicals, nor Walrasians, nor Marshallians, nor Marxians, nor Keynesians, nor Institutionialists, nor Monetary Economists, nor MMTers, nor Austrians, nor Sraffaians, nor Evolutionists, nor Game theorists, nor EconoPhysicists, nor RBCers, nor New Keynesians, nor New Classicals ever came to grips with profit. Hence, they fail to capture the essence of the market economy.

Because of this, economists have nothing to offer in the way of scientifically founded advice. See How the intelligent non-economist can refute every economist hands down.

***

REPLY  What are economists? comment on Bob on Jan 20

You say “Political economy is all tere is.”

If this is so, then elementary logic tells you that economics should give up the claim to be a science and leave academia. The first problem with economists is that they never grasped what science is all about.#1

This is remarkable because the great economist and methodologist J. S. Mill told them already more than 200 years ago “A scientific observer or reasoner, merely as such, is not an adviser for practice. His part is only to show that certain consequences follow from certain causes, and that to obtain certain ends, certain means are the most effectual. Whether the ends themselves are such as ought to be pursued, and if so, in what cases and to how great a length, it is no part of his business as a cultivator of science to decide, and science alone will never qualify him for the decision.” (2006, p. 950)

The difference between political economics and theoretical economics is important because alone the latter is strictly committed to scientific standards: “A genuine inquirer aims to find out the truth of some question, whatever the color of that truth. ... A pseudo-inquirer seeks to make a case for the truth of some proposition(s) determined in advance. There are two kinds of pseudo-inquirer, the sham and the fake. A sham reasoner is concerned, not to find out how things really are, but to make a case for some immovably-held preconceived conviction. A fake reasoner is concerned, not to find out how things really are, but to advance himself by making a case for some proposition to the truth-value of which he is indifferent. (Haack, 1997, p. 1)

The fact of the matter is that the representative economist can, after more than 200 years of much political economics and virtually no proper theoretical economics, still not tell what profit is “A satisfactory theory of profits is still elusive.” (Desai, 2008, p. 10)

Let this sink in: People who are utterly confused about the foundational concept of their discipline claim to be scientists and tell politicians and the general public how to run the economy. Scary, isn’t it?


References
Desai, M. (2008). Profit and Profit Theory. In S. N. Durlauf, and L. E. Blume (Eds.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online, 1–11. Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd edition. URL
Haack, S. (1997). Science, Scientism, and Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism. Skeptical Inquirer, 21(6): 1–7. URL
Mill, J. S. (2006). A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive. Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, Vol. 8 of Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

#1 Lousy scientists

Related 'Are economists natural-born scientific failures?' and 'Confused Orthodoxy vs. confused Heterodoxy' and 'Agenda pushing or science?'.

Axiomatics — the heterodox bugbear

Comment on Lars Syll on ‘Axiomatics — the economics fetish’

Blog-Reference

Why can heterodox economists not get their heads around the methodological fact that axiomatization and empiricism are not mutually exclusive but the two sides of the coin called theory?

“In Einstein's words, geometry constituted one of the oldest physical theories. In the preface to his Principia Newton treats geometry as a branch of mechanics, i.e. as a branch of physics: Therefore geometry is founded in mechanical practice and is nothing but that part of universal mechanics which accurately proposes and demonstrates the art of measuring.” (Zahar, 1980, p. 3)

That axioms are strictly empirical was obvious to the economics founding fathers: “... in Mill's view, the axioms of Euclidian geometry are inductive.” (Whitaker, 1975, p. 1038)

The original commonsensical realism of axioms got out of sight in the process of ever-increasing refinement, precision, idealization, and the ever-increasing requirement of logical consistency.

Historically, axioms as the basis of subsequent deduction are themselves arrived at by intuitive induction. They are neither plucked out of thin air nor arbitrary. A direct proof of the fact that axioms are empirical is that Gauss set out to test them “One of the most famous stories about Gauss depicts him measuring the angles of the great triangle formed by the mountain peaks of Hohenhagen, Inselberg, and Brocken for evidence that the geometry of space is non-Euclidean.” (Brown, 2011, p. 565)

Axioms are ‘realistic’ but in a highly refined form derived from the deeper reality: “... the repugnance which it [the axiomatic method] still meets here and there can only be explained by the natural difficulty of the mind to admit, in dealing with a concrete problem, that a form of intuition, which is not suggested directly by the given elements (and which often can be arrived at only by a higher and frequently difficult stage of abstraction), can turn out to be equally fruitful.” (Bourbaki, 2005, p. 1275)

Axiomatization is not an easy thing as more than 2500 years of history since Euclid testify and it is quite natural to get it wrong. This, clearly, is not a fault of the method but of the user: “My opinion continues to be that axiomatics, like every other tool of science, is no better than its user, and not all users are skilled.” (Clower, 1995, p. 308)

It is correct of Heterodoxy to insist that something went wrong with Debreu’s axiomatization of general equilibrium (Ackerman et al., 2004). The obvious error/mistake is that there exists no such thing as an equilibrium in the economy. It is simply an inexcusable methodological blunder to axiomatize a nonentity. As Clower said, not all users are skilled.

It is correct of Heterodoxy to reject the neo-Walrasian axioms. But to reject axiomatization as a method is stupid and ultimately self-defeating. Axiomatics is not a fetish but an indispensable tool to secure logical consistency. The classical economists understood this well.

“To Senior belongs the signal honor of having been the first to make the attempt to state, consciously and explicitly, the postulates that are necessary and sufficient in order to build up … that little analytic apparatus commonly known as economic theory, or to put it differently, to provide for it an axiomatic basis.” (Schumpeter, 1994, p. 575)

Because neither Senior nor Debreu nor Heterodoxy has been successful, this task is still unfinished.#1 And this is why economics is, until this day, not much more than storytelling, ad hocery, and persistent confusion at the proto-scientific level.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


References
Ackerman, F., and Nadal, A. (Eds.) (2004). Still Dead After All These Years: Interpreting the Failure of General Equilibrium Theory. London, New York: Routledge.
Bourbaki, N. (2005). The Architecture of Mathematics. In W. Ewald (Ed.), From Kant to Hilbert. A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics, Vol. II, 1265–1276. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. (1948).
Brown, K. (2011). Reflections on Relativity. Raleigh: Lulu.com.
Clower, R. W. (1995). Axiomatics in Economics. Southern Economic Journal, 62(2): 307–319. URL
Schumpeter, J. A. (1994). History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.
Whitaker, J. K. (1975). John Stuart Mill’s Methodology. Chicago Journals, 83(5): 1033–1050. URL
Zahar, E. (1980). Einstein, Meyerson and the Role of Mathematics in Physical Discovery. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 31(1): 1–43. URL


#1 Towards the true economic theory
 
Related 'Lars Syll creatively destructs Wren-Lewis' and 'Axiomatized nonentities and the failure of methodologists'. For details of the big picture see cross-references Axiomatisation and cross-references Paradigm shift.

Immediately following Economists’ proto-scientific methodology.

Economists’ last Hurrah

Comment on Simon Wren-Lewis on ‘Economics Rules by Dani Rodrik’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

Economists do not understand how the market system works. Every interested non-economist with a modicum of scientific instinct or background in the genuine sciences gets this after reading one of the popular textbooks: “What is now taught as standard economic theory will eventually disappear, no trace of it will remain in the universities or boardrooms because it simply doesn’t work: were it engineering, the bridge would collapse.” (McCauley, 2006, p. 17)#1

According to the scientific criteria of material and formal consistency, orthodox economics is not acceptable. #2 Because of this, every thinking economist finds himself by default in the heterodox camp. But here, only one obvious fact is agreed upon; the rest is blank.

“As will become evident, there is more agreement on the defects of orthodox theory than there is on what theory is to replace it: but all agreed that the point of the criticism is to clear the ground for construction.” (Nell, 1980, p. 1)

Construction never happened. So, there is nothing to choose from. Economics is a failed science. Traditional Heterodoxy offers no hope. For lack of an alternative, Orthodoxy vegetates as a scientific zombie (Quiggin, 2010). There is only one way out of the stalemate: a paradigm shift. This much was already clear after the grand debacle of general equilibrium theory.

“There is another alternative: to formulate a completely new research program and conceptual approach. As we have seen, this is often spoken of, but there is still no indication of what it might mean.” (Ingrao et al., 1990, p. 362)

Until this day, neither Orthodoxy nor Heterodoxy has an idea of what a ‘completely new research program and conceptual approach’ might mean.

In their intellectual stalemate, economists just doctor on the symptoms and continuously repackage the same old garbage. Because the ambition of a general theory admittedly produced merely hot air, there is a retreat to partial, small-scale models and theoryless empiricism. Because he cannot explain how the economic universe works, the humbled economist now researches the economic goldfish bowl.

The resulting heap of incoherent models is superficially held together by the joint concepts maximization-and-equilibrium. Unfortunately, these concepts are NONENTITIES and methodologically inadmissible as foundational premises of theoretical economics. Nothing can ever be really explained with maximization-and-equilibrium — just because seemingly everything can be explained. Explanation, though, is not worth anything if it does not satisfy the criteria of material and formal consistency.

“Everything can be ‘explained’ if we place no restrictions on what we mean by ‘explanation’.” (Blaug, 1994, p. 123)

Wren-Lewis is methodologically anesthetic and does not feel anything when he shoots himself in the foot: “The key idea is that there are many valid models, and the goal is to know when they are applicable to the problem in hand.” This is the very definition of ad hocery.

The painful irony of methodologically degenerate economics is that the genuine sciences follow the program of the great economist and methodologist J. S. Mill “... but underneath the complexities [of string theory] is a modern version of John Stuart Mill’s desideratum of fundamental physics: a unified description of all fundamental interactions.” (Farmelo, 2009, p. 436)

Economists are incompetent scientists and never understood their proper task: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum, 1991, p. 30)

Economists lack the true theory. But they always had many opinions for the politicians to choose from. #3 Eclecticism, pluralism, and ad hocery are not virtues in science. Just the contrary: a heap of loosely connected and contradicting models is the very proof of scientific failure. Nothing short of a Paradigm Shift will do.

Wren-Lewis’s and Rodrik’s sales talk about the models-to-go version of the maximization-and-equilibrium approach is the last Hurrah before this 150-year-old embarrassment is buried in the Encyclopedia of Proto-Science directly adjacent to the Flat-Earth theory.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


References
Blaug, M. (1994). Why I am Not a Constructivist. Confessions of an Unrepentant Popperian. In R. E. Backhouse (Ed.), New Directions in Economic Methodology, 109–136. London, New York: Routledge.
Farmelo, G. (2009). The Strangest Man. The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius. London: Faber and Faber.
Ingrao, B., and Israel, G. (1990). The Invisible Hand. Economic Equilibrium in the History of Science. Cambridge, London: MIT Press.
McCauley, J. L. (2006). Response to "Worrying Trends in EconoPhysics". EconoPhysics Forum, 0601001: 1–26. URL
Nell, E. J. (1980). Growth, Profits, and Property, chapter Cracks in the Neoclassical Mirror: On the Break-Up of a Vision, 1–16. Cambridge, New York, NY, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
Quiggin, J. (2010). Zombie Economics. How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Stigum, B. P. (1991). Toward a Formal Science of Economics: The Axiomatic Method in Economics and Econometrics. Cambridge: MIT Press.

#1 How the intelligent non-economist can refute every economist hands down
#2 Are economists natural-born scientific failures?
#3 “If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.” (Churchill)

The economics of gossip and misplaced humor

Comment on Lars Syll on ‘The gussied up economics of Tweedledum and Tweedledee’

Blog-Reference

James K. Galbraith sums up the current state of economics “Krugman’s entire essay is about two groups, both deeply entrenched at (what they believe to be) the top of academic economics. Both are deeply preoccupied with their status and with a struggle for influence and for academic power and prestige — against the other group.” (See intro)

Irrespective of whether it is accurate or not, this characterization simply distorts the perspective. To make a situation understandable by second-guessing other peoples’ motives has always been a senseless exercise — except in sitcoms. As Schumpeter put it: “Remember: occasionally, it may be an interesting question to ask why a man says what he says; but whatever the answer, it does not tell us anything about whether what he says is true or false.” (1994, p. 11)

Of interest is alone whether what the one or the other group present as economic theory/ model is true or false. All the rest is gossip.

Actually, both groups are not different at the core. As Krugman put it “most of what I and many others do is sorta-kinda neoclassical because it takes the maximization-and-equilibrium world as a starting point ...”.

And this is the outcome in a nutshell: All models that are based on the assumptions of constrained optimization and equilibrium are provably false.#1 There is no use at all to make a great fuss about whether the salty mistake/error is worse than the fresh blunder or vice versa.

Krugman’s distinction between salty and fresh simply distracts from the fact that maximization-and-equilibrium is false since Jevons/Walras/Menger — long before the salty/fresh guys started with their proto-scientific stunts. The representative economist is, after more than 150 years, still behind the curve. That’s not funny.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


References
Schumpeter, J. A. (1994). History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.

#1 The creative destruction of Wren-Lewis and How the intelligent non-economist can refute every economist hands down

Lousy scientists

Comment on Lars Syll on ‘Wren-Lewis and the Rodrik smorgasbord view of economic models’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

The underlying binary code of criminal proceedings is guilty/not-guilty. The accused has an interest in a clear-cut not-guilty outcome if he is indeed not the wrongdoer. On the other hand, the accused, if he is indeed the wrongdoer, has the interest to arrive somewhere in the middle between guilty/not-guilty. Therefore, what he applies is a stratagem, that is, he blurs and obstructs the underlying binary distinction in all possible ways.

The situation is analogous in science where the underlying binary code is true/false. The genuine scientist tries to sharpen the issue at hand in order to eventually arrive at a clear-cut true/false answer. Everything in-between is scientifically worthless. The cargo cult scientist (Feynman’s term), on the other hand, tries everything to keep the issue safely in the no-mans-land between true/false, where “nothing is clear and everything is possible.” (Keynes)

The term ‘conventionalist stratagem’ has been introduced into methodology by Popper (see here). Boiled down to essentials it amounts to the application of all possible communicative means in order to prevent a clear-cut true/false outcome.

As a matter of fact, the stratagem issue goes back to the origin of science. Plato had been confronted by the Sophists whose selling proposition has been that they could win the client’s case no matter whether they were de facto right or wrong.

“Plato’s main concern with the Sophists is that their rhetoric does not provide an adequate view of justice

• Doxa – public opinion: Sophistic manipulation of doxa is aimed at persuasion only,
• Episteme – true knowledge: Plato’s goal beyond persuasion is to discover epistemic truth.” (see here)

By proudly advertising that they have a model for every season, Wren-Lewis and Rodrik fall back methodologically to the proto-scientific position of the Sophists.

There is no better empirical proof of scientific incompetence than to apply proto-scientific stratagems. To be sure, this holds for both orthodox and heterodox economists in equal measure. Wren-Lewis and Rodrik are not the exceptions but the rule. And this is why economics is a failed science.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke