13 ms·

If Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists

126 points by pistachiopro 10y ago

trendia 10y ago
Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?" The answer would be rigor. A huge problem with sociology is the dependence on the story. Unfortunately, since the sociologist is often a human with their own biases, they are going to see what they want to see. For example, I purchased the Kindle version of the book the author recommends ("Coming Up Short"). I turned to the appendix, where the author describes her research methodology. And sure enough, the research involves open-ended questions ("Walk me through a typical day at work." "Is there a time you lost a job? Could you describe it?") that could lead the interviewee to respond in any way they want. There are many problems with this, such as : 1) the interviewee may inadvertently invent convenient narratives that provide comfort but aren't accurate, 2) the interviewer may mis-interpret the answers, etc. How are we supposed to develop policy off of this? Sure, it's a great starting point for starting research, but the narrative- or story-based approach should never be the conclusion. This is why economics is so much more trusted. Although economics has flaws, and the study of econometrics can sometimes lead to incorrect conclusions, it at least uses objective data and metrics, which are less susceptible to error, providing a much more grounded approach to policy decisions.
- matt4077 10y ago
  By "rigor" you mean "math". But economics itself is the best proof that math can be used to cargo-cult your opinions to fame and fortune. While there are some attempts with evidence-based policy, these sciences just aren't really at the point where math is useful (yet). Math mostly requires reducibility: the ability to split it into small parts and look at these individually. That approach worked incredibly well in physics, and with the Manhattan project at the latest, it proved that it was mightier than any human endeavour before it. But while, theoretically, everything could be reduced to physics, that isn't always the level of abstraction that works best. If you're depressed, a physicist isn't going to help you. Medicine may – but a psychologist, even though the discipline is scientifically flawed - is still an important tool in the set available to us. Sociology is psychology on a population-scale. In that regard, it may be almost impossible to reduce because of nonlinear effects, chaos etc. That severely limits applying results from prior experiment X,Y,Z to situation B – because what you usually do is split situation B into components (B1=X,B2=Y,B3=Z,...), each of which is quite generic and has been studied in detail. So you'd have to run your own experiment on B, and the questions of sociology would require you to run an A/B experiment, with both A and B being, for example, New York.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    You seem to be claiming that the results of sociology cannot be predictive, only descriptive. If so, that makes sociology completely useless for policy. A field which cannot predict what will happen next time can't actually inform a policy maker as to whether their policy is useful. Math mostly requires reducibility: the ability to split it into small parts and look at these individually. This is simply false. If this is your criticism of math in economics, it applies equally well to math in geophysics, oceanography, climate science, etc.
    - 1337biz 10y ago
      My fav quote on that: "Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window." (Peter Drucker)
    - devinhelton 10y ago
      The better critique is that math requires homogenous data points. In sociology, every policy implementation is different in a million ways. A welfare program in Sweden is different than one in Chicago. The charter school program in Boston are different than those in Detroit. So doing statistical studies on a question like "do charter schools work" that treats all these implementations as identical, is often not very useful for actually learning something about policy.
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        The better critique is that math requires homogenous data points. This critique is similarly wrong. There's a field called "machine learning" - you might have heard of it - which often uses inhomogeneous data points. So doing statistical studies on a question like "do charter schools work" that treats all these implementations as identical, is often not very useful for actually learning something about policy. So instead build a model that understands the important factors which make charter schools work/fail. Then use it. If you can't do this, don't pretend you have anything to say about whether I should implement charter schools.
    - 10y ago
- cjustice 10y ago
  Modern Western society seems to associate quantitative research with "rigor", and to believe that it is more objective than qualitative studies. Rather than take this approach, I believe it would be more worthwhile to say that all research will be influenced by the author's societal positioning. For example, consider how economists choose what metrics to use in their experiments. It seems to me impossible to say that those choices could ever be unbiased, free of influence by external forces.
- jahaja 10y ago
  I think you're giving economics the benefit of the doubt while having a critical eye towards sociology when they're not much different in regards to objectivity and being "soft" sciences. In fact I'm not sure sociology would still have its credibility intact if it were to have as many failures as economics have had just the latest 20 years or so. Somehow economics manages this, which leads me to the next point. I'm surprised that you're speaking with such certainty without mentioning the rather powerful relationship between economics and finance in a classical "follow the money" trail of thought.
  - trendia 10y ago
    > relationship between economics and finance in a classical "follow the money" trail of thought. What specifically are you claiming?
    - jahaja 10y ago
      That the study of economics has a strong connection to both capital and power while sociology is more academic/institutional and thus less influential.
      - dredmorbius 10y ago
        This. In spades. J.K. Galbraith (an economist himself) has claimed largely the same himself, and he's hardly the only one (within the field). (Update) Some examples: https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/ https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/
      - trendia 10y ago
        Except for Stiglitz, Borjas, Piketty, etc.
      - sdenton4 10y ago
        True dat. Economics has a number of reformers, in endless battle with an elite who make their names and fortunes by telling power what it wants to hear (and dressing it up with shamanistic differential equations to give the appearance of credibility).
- RobertoG 10y ago
  "Although economics has flaws [..]" That would be the understatement of the century. Economics theory decide how to organize society resources, so, it's a very loaded subject with a lot of interests trying to decide what is "reality". Economics use complicated maths to justify ideologically determined policy. I propose you a simple exercise. Go to any mainstream economic textbook and read about the fractional reserve system creation of money, that it's supposedly how the system works. Then go and read what the people that are really in charge say about how money is created (pdf from the Bank of England): http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q1prereleasemoneycreation.pdf http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte... If the textbooks in economics are wrong about a basic thing like that, maybe we should start to think carefully about the subject.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    >That would be the understatement of the century. Indeed. If it weren't for nutritionists, economists would win the prize for having the discipline most disconnected from reality.
    - jschwartzi 10y ago
      If you read a basic 100-level nutrition textbook, I guarantee you that you'll recant your statement. The problem isn't that the disciplines are disconnected from reality, but that people are treating bleeding-edge research as if it's scientific fact, rather than taking it all with a grain of salt as you would do in another scientific discipline.
      - gozur88 10y ago
        What makes you think I haven't read such a textbook? The problem is the insights in economics are either obvious or dubious, save Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage. Which, I should add, doesn't seem to hold up in practice either.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    The creation of money is actually among the more sensible elements of economics, though fractional reserve lending may not be the best route to doing that (I'm not sure that it is or isn't, though I'm pretty certain it's not the bugbear people claim it is). I'd look at economic definitions of cost, value, and price, of ignoring the reality of thermodynamics, and of much of the theology (Thorstein Veblen uses the term "mythology") surrounding supposedly rationally-acting "homo economicus", market failures, and the role of information, amongst many others. Money is first and principally a mechanism for exchange, and gumming up that role leads to problems. Fractional-reserve and central banking greatly assists in this, and is by and large hugely useful.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  "Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?"" It needs to generate 'useful' political recommendations (useful to the 'right' people). "The answer would be rigor." No it absolutely would not. The economics profession has been actively resisting rigor. For instance, Neoclassical (still the default in policy circles) still considers private debt to have no significant macroeconomic effect and presumes, religiously, that markets trend towards equilibrium (particularly in employment). "This is why economics is so much more trusted." It shouldn't be. "it at least uses objective data" Would you have any faith in a model rooted in Newtonian mechanics that assumed away friction just because "it at least uses objective data"?
  - raphlinus 10y ago
    The use of math in economics is much like the use of Newtonian mechanics to understand elementary particle interactions at the horizons of black holes.
- tasty_freeze 10y ago
  Look how much influence the Laffer Curve has had on economic policy, when in fact it is a pretty boring observation that taxation at a rate of 0% produces no income for the government, and taxation at a rate of 100% produces no income for the government (because of the lack of incentive to work), therefore the optimum is somewhere between those two points. That broad idea was enough to argue that the highest tax rates were way too high and had to be cut substantially.
  - MagnumOpus 10y ago
    And that is a good example of the disconnect between economics as a social science and politicians instrumentalising some sound bites from economics profs and selling it as "what the economists tell us". There are numerous economics papers studying exactly what is the shape of the Laffer curve both from historical analysis as well as trying to find natural experiments. (IIRC tax revenue peaks at 50-65% tax rates, at least in the short run.) None of the politicians actually know or care about the results of these studies - as long as the sound bite is convenient as a rhetoric device to support their ideology (cutting taxes or raising taxes or whatever, it gets trotted out by politicians. Sadly, ex-economists who definitely do know better are instrumental in this as well. People like Krugman, Mankiw or indeed Laffer got a large audience based on genuine rigorous contributions from 10 or 20 years ago - and then promptly ignore all that rigor, uncertainty and intellectual honesty when they get the offer of a $10million/year payday and a chance to mold the world according to their ideology from politicians and media. It is the same thing with international trade, it is the same thing with state-vs-private ownership and natural monopolies, it is the same thing with costs/benefits of demographic change and migration.
- ipsin 10y ago
  It seems pretty clear that you don't like qualitative sociology, but do you have a problem with the rigor of quantitative sociology, as it is currently practiced?
- yxwvut 10y ago
  Reading the replies you're getting, it seems the average HN commenter: A. Has never read an economics research paper B. Only know economics as monetary policy (or macro more broadly), and as a libertarian is inherently skeptical. Currently, most of the interesting research being done in econ is outside of theoretical macro, so the knee jerk libertarian "economics is broken" meme doesn't hold much water as the topics and methods are pretty dissimilar. A developmental microeconomics field study in rural India is a different beast entirely from a macro theory paper. For a sample of the diversity of economics research, see here: http://www.nber.org/papersbyprog/ http://www.nber.org/papersbyprog/ Returning to your comment, the issue of storytelling, in a nutshell, was what drove me crazy when working closely with qualitative sociologists. Trying to discuss falsifiability in their study design was maddening. Sociology doesn't need to adopt the same research model as applied economics but they do need a serious look at their research methods, and I have more respect for those who try to take a quantitative approach. Many of the sociologists I worked with would turn up their noses at the phrase "computational social science" and were loathe to discuss issues like biased sampling, but the best ones (IMO) used qualitative observations to drive later large-scale quantitative study, which I think should be the de-facto standard for social science research. Their reliance on ethnographic studies can be useful for verifying the existence of some phenomenon you have a hunch exists in some form, but such research is woefully biased and wholly inadequate as a means of measuring the prevalence or magnitude of a phenomenon, which is why economics studies (or quantitative methods more broadly) tend to have more credence when presenting evidence on the same subjects.
  - RobertoG 10y ago
    "most of the interesting research being done in econ is outside of theoretical macro" I'm not sure why that save economics from the discussion, when it's the theoretical macro what have a huge influence in the life of billions of persons and the title of the article we are discussing is "If Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists". The libertarian comment is uncalled for, as most of the comments here don't express a political view, only criticism of the discipline.
    - yxwvut 10y ago
- ajb 10y ago
  You say sociological methodology leads the researcher to project their own biases onto the data, but the method you criticise- open questions - is precisely designed to avoid this. The sociological methodology most focussed on avoiding researcher bias is Grounded Theory[1]. It follows the collection of data via open-ended questions and interviews with further techniques to analyse this unstructured data in a way that avoids introducing preconceived ideas from the researcher (coding, etc). The problem with pointing to qualitative techniques as more rigorous and less biassed, is that the bias - when it comes to data about people- often lies in the decision what to measure - especially when categorising - and how to interpret the numerical result when you have (rigorously) processed it. That is as susceptible to preconceptions of the researcher. It's just easier for an economist to hide behind the rigour applied to the quantitative part. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory
  - TheGRS 10y ago
    Agreed, yes/no questions can often be leading and may come to totally inaccurate conclusions. With open-ended questions you may get a rich answer with a lot of bias, but at least the answer is rich and you can sift through the data gathered. Its just not nearly as efficient as a "rate on a scale of 1-10" or "yes or no" questionnaire. But the devil is always in the details.
- jccalhoun 10y ago
  As someone who got minored in Anthropology in my phd program, I like qualitative because it is descriptive. Quantitative work are best at telling us what answers people gave or a numerical summary of what people did. It can't tell us why people gave that answer or why they did what they did.
  - weberc2 10y ago
    Unfortunately, we can't even trust this qualitative work, because it is produced by an ideologically homogeneous body. It's not possible to remove the confirmation bias. These departments often seem more like clergy than scientists.
- mathattack 10y ago
  Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?" The answer would be rigor. A huge problem with sociology is the dependence on the story. Unfortunately, since the sociologist is often a human with their own biases, they are going to see what they want to see. This is exactly it. They can't prove what they know, or make good predictions. When you insert yourself into the story, you can't shake confirmation bias. Economics is still shaky science, but the economists at least try to get on stronger fundamental footing.
- aphextron 10y ago
  >The answer would be rigor. A huge problem with sociology is the dependence on the story. Unfortunately, since the sociologist is often a human with their own biases, they are going to see what they want to see. This is the exact problem, yet it is hard to get someone in the social sciences to admit it in my experience. For instance, I am a computer science student, and I'm currently taking a political science class as part of my university requirements. A recent exam question was worded in multiple choice format, to the effect that the professor was seeking an exact specific answer to a completely subjective question, such as "What is the most important issue facing China as it's population continues to grow?". It's completely absurd, and you end up with an exam full of questions with one "correct" answer, and a bunch of nonsensical gibberish for the other options. This lack of imprecision drives me absolutely mad. I understand that social sciences are inherently dealing with subject matter that is harder to quantify than, say, computer science. But the issue is when one asserts that scientific conclusions can be made about these subjects when no formal system of reasoning exists. To quote from a recent article I read, "Until we have a deep understanding of the brain, we can't shape falsifiable, general theories about it, and mind studies cannot provide a reliable understanding of the brain. In short, no theory, no falsifiability, no science." http://arachnoid.com/psychology_and_alchemy/ http://arachnoid.com/psychology_and_alchemy/ In short, if social scientists simply accepted that their fields do not fit the traditional rigors of science, it would do much to alleviate the issue. Studying these things can still provide valuable, actionable insight. But to treat it on par with the natural sciences is fraudulent.
  - vacri 10y ago
    > But to treat it on par with the natural sciences is fraudulent. ... because economics is a natural science?
- khawkins 10y ago
  In addition, sociology as a practice seems to tie itself deeply to activism. When it does so, the credibility of sociology as a scientific pursuit weakens. Compare, for example, at Colombia University, the Department of Sociology homepage http://sociology.columbia.edu/ http://sociology.columbia.edu/ and the Department of Economoics http://econ.columbia.edu/ http://econ.columbia.edu/. The sociology page features a huge image of a protest of the recent immigration executive orders. The economics page, on the other hand, features upcoming talks like "Iceland's Road to Recovery" and "Modern Financial Markets: The Role of High-Frequency Trading". The sociology department is signaling that they're passionate about ideological issues, while the economics department is signaling that they're focused on understanding and analyzing. People trust scientists because people believe they are willing and able to divorce their emotions and vested interests from an objective pursuit of the truth. Sociology seems to fail that test time after time.
  - RodericDay 10y ago
    > Compare, for example, at Colombia University, the Department of Sociology homepage http://sociology.columbia.edu/ http://sociology.columbia.edu/ and the Department of Economoics http://econ.columbia.edu/ http://econ.columbia.edu/. The sociology page features a huge image of a protest of the recent immigration executive orders. The economics page, on the other hand, features upcoming talks like "Iceland's Road to Recovery" and "Modern Financial Markets: The Role of High-Frequency Trading". The sociology department is signaling that they're passionate about ideological issues, while the economics department is signaling that they're focused on understanding and analyzing. How can you conjure up this example, and conclude that only sociology is ideological?
    - barry-cotter 10y ago
      > How can you conjure up this example, and conclude that only sociology is ideological? Would it be better if he had said that the Economics department seems to aspire to centrist technocracy and the Sociology department varies from left wing to far left?
      - 10y ago
- vacri 10y ago
  > The answer would be rigor. Nonsense. Back to the original question, the reason why economics has influence is because it involves money. The people who hold the purse strings talk in that language, and those people always pay themselves first. Sociology could have perfect rigor, beyond that of any other disciple, but it would never have the influence of economics.
- RodericDay 10y ago
  > Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?" Become obsequious towards those in power? Find out rationalizations for our current state of affairs? Come up with reasons why we live in the best of all possible worlds? Joan Robinson once put it pretty concisely, "The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."
- sfifs 10y ago
  In marketing research, the normal approach tends to use sociology type research to generate hypothesis and ideas which you then either test quantitatively with rigor or through in market testing. Sometimes, if the narrative research is convincing enough, you might directly skip to an in market test execution.
- ucaetano 10y ago
  "The answer would be rigor." It reminds me of the often-cited Stanford Prison Experiment. The lack of any rigor during the experiment is usually ignored when the findings are discussed. The "experiment" had no control group, or even a separation between the observers and the ones involved in the experiment (Zimbardo was both the prison chief and the lead researcher). From an experimental setup point of view, it was just an amateurish mess.
- icelancer 10y ago
  The number of responses to this post broadly implicating macroeconomics as psuedoscience are pounding nails into their own coffins considering macroeconomics and the applications of the study tend to be sociological in nature. There's no psuedoscience behind microeconomic analysis of market interactions at the lower levels; they very well model how markets, businesses, exchanges of value, etc operate.
  - the_why_of_y 10y ago
    Some practically useless models of macroeconomics (Real Business Cycle theory) pride themselves in being fully "microfounded", i.e., being based only on the basic assumptions of microeconomics. The uselessness is then demonstrated by proclamations that the doubling of the unemployment rate in the recent financial crisis is caused by 10s of millions of workers suddenly developing a preference for leisure over work.
- MR4D 10y ago
  There are many people who would disagree with your thoughts on economists being rigorous - at least about data that is relevant. For instance, this article ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/390063/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article... ). This joke probably sums up what many people think of economists: Q: Why did God create economists? A: In order to make weather forecasters look good.
devinhelton 10y ago
Sociologists have had a very large impact on policy in the last century. For example, the hundreds of billions spent on public housing was based on ideas that came out of sociology -- https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dvPJvrleZI_wckWhjsRNPPRl4xU=/1000x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4432835/LOC02hr.0.jpg https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dvPJvrleZI_wckWhjsRNPPRl4xU... It just didn't work. And a large body of sociological research touches on the idea of stigmatization, including of the poor and of racial minorities. Many school reforms ideas (desegregation, elimination of corporal punishment, reducing emphasis on rote learning, etc) were based on this theory. The Brown versus Board of Education decision cited sociological research along these lines, for example. But the theories were wrong, so the solutions did not work. Professor Raymond Wolters has two exhaustive (if depressing) histories of these reforms and their failures. See The Long Crusade: Profiles in Education Reform, 1967-2014 and The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation It’s one thing, for example, to outlaw housing discrimination based on race. But if real estate agents and would-be home sellers subtly shun minority buyers, the effect can be the same. Professor Gans of Columbia has argued for decades that the stigmatization of poor Americans fuels entrenched, persistent poverty. Sociologists haven't been ignored -- this was the theory behind Section 8 Vouchers which is a very large program. But again, the theory was wrong and the solutions did not work. See https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/306872/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/america... and http://devinhelton.com/historical-amnesia.html http://devinhelton.com/historical-amnesia.html
- rayiner 10y ago
  Desegregation didn't work?
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    As a school reform idea, no. Putting blacks into the general vicinity of whites does not appear to cause them to have better educational outcomes. I don't find this too surprising, actually. It would be pretty strange if white people emitted pheremones (or whatever) that improve the educational performance of people around them.
dvt 10y ago
I've found sociology and its approaches to be profoundly insightful. Even though I'm a trained philosopher, one of my favorite thinkers is not a philosopher, but Max Weber, the founding father of sociology. Economists probably have more influence due to the fact that economics is perceived to be a "hard science". The irony, of course, is that it isn't.
- VladKovac 10y ago
  Max Weber's theories on Protestantism being the cause of success in America have been pretty much thoroughly debunked when you control for differences in aptitude amongst the religious sects that arrived to America in it's early history. Not to mention his work led to the founding ideas of the Frankfurt School lol.
  - dvt 10y ago
    This post is just a bunch of nonsense. His theories on the Protestant ethic are controversial[1], but hardly "thoroughly debunked." As far as the Frankfurt School, uh, who cares? They drew from many political and social philosophies (including Marx who we often find at odds with Weber). It just seems completely uncharitable and tangential to bring it up. [1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/08/29/is_the_protestant_work_ethic_real_a_new_study_claims_it_can_be_measured.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/08/29/is_the_prot...
    - clydethefrog 10y ago
      Bringing them up in a negative way is usually used as a dogwhistle for people that believe in the "cultural Marxism" conspiracy.
  - bobcostas55 10y ago
    While Weber over-stated his case, he has definitely not been "debunked". Check out _Causes and Consequences of the Protestant Reformation_ by Becker et al[0], it's a survey of the literature and contains a lot of empirical evidence in support of the Weberian view of the Reformation. [0] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d680/a29a28682b933d75e35d5aec902c843ab770.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d680/a29a28682b933d75e35d5a...
ori_b 10y ago
I find it interesting that the article doesn't mention actions that might be taken if sociologists had more influence. Not a word about what we might do differently.
- Natsu 10y ago
  I find it interesting because one could argue that you should be able to apply a sort of success filter to either discipline to see who is skilled at what they do. For example: How many rich economists are there? How many influential sociologists are there?
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  There's some indirect references, but yes, a good point: that's a pretty glaring lack. The comments about the social interactions of what are perceived as economic transactions or phenmomena strongly suggests a few differences. The social dislocations caused by job loss, or housing eviction, are specifically mentioned. I'd see far more weight and consideration given both in policy.
ianai 10y ago
I think this is a false premise. Politicians/decision makers merely listen to people they want to listen to speak. There are "schools of thought" in economics that really only exist because someone wants to hear that viewpoint.
Mendenhall 10y ago
Then bad ideas propagated by non replicable "science" would spread even more rampant.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Then bad ideas propagated by non replicable "science" would have a counterargument.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
camdenlock 10y ago
> For starters, while economists tend to view a job as a straightforward exchange of labor for money, a wide body of sociological research shows how tied up work is with a sense of purpose and identity. This is precisely why handing the reins over to sociologists would be dangerous. The concept of "identity" is massively over-valued in our society, with very little coherent critical commentary available. Somehow it's seen as an unassailable, unquestionable truism: every person has an identity, and they build on it throughout their entire life. Giving sociologist-types more power to shape policy will lead to an increase in the acceptance and enforcement of this erroneous thought process. Erroneous because one's "identity" is, in reality, of extremely limited utility and the source of much suffering: does my identity properly reflect who I really am? Are others being respectful to my identity? Are they behaving correctly toward me considering my identity? Is my identity subject to systematic oppression? Should I change my identity or keep it the same? How many people know about my current identity vs. my precious identity that I promoted for many years? Spending time ruminating and basing policy on this concept of identity is a huge waste of resources, and what's the outcome? Pure, unadulterated suffering. Identity has its place as a tool for conducting transactions and working in groups, but sociologists and their ilk have elevated it to an all-encompassing life-defining concern, and that's just not reasonable. Given how much we're already burdening ourselves here in the West with identity politics and other massive wastes of resources, I cringe at the thought of sociologists having MORE power over our lives.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  If you don't mind my asking, what do you do?
  - camdenlock 10y ago
    I make music and sell it. Not very lucrative, but it's fulfilling. Do you think my career choice is relevant to my distrust of the western obsession with identity? :)
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      How strongly do you identify with the instruments, genres, venues, media, etc., in which this profession takes you?
NumberCruncher 10y ago
In my experience sociologists would like to do the work of the statisticians without working with big scale data and without understanding even the most simple statistical models. Thank's god they do not have more influence. This statement is based on a study I made by myself using a representative sample: I have 3 sociology PHDs in my team.
cs2818 10y ago
Maybe this is just relative to my area of work, but I often feel that the sociologists I work/am friends with are in a dangerous balancing act of attempting to influence policy while also conducting unbiased research inquiries. While this isn't completely unique to sociology, I would argue that the area of study can make it difficult to form research questions and studies which are not confounded by current public policy or personal opinion. To me it would seem intuitive to have an additional field or area of focus that emphasizes applying sociological findings to public policy.
- schoen 10y ago
  A particular elephant in the room here might be that economists also not uncommonly engage in policy advocacy, yet the stereotypical sociologist's political advocacy is left-wing and the stereotypical economist's political advocacy is right-wing, at least relative to one another. Maybe one part of that is that the two have fairly different understandings of what makes human societies tick.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Economics has avoided this dilemma by disposing of unbiased research. W. Brian Arthur has pointed out that virtually all significant economic research explores specific policy questions of the day. Usually with a particular point of view in mind. The results can be ... amusing. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4xe2k1/chambers_encyclopaedia_editorial_statement/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4xe2k1/chamber...
analog31 10y ago
For starters, while economists tend to view a job as a straightforward exchange of labor for money, a wide body of sociological research shows how tied up work is with a sense of purpose and identity. Amusingly, I've noticed that most HR managers have psychology degrees. I've wondered: What if HR managers had economics degrees. Would we be paid more? When I was a manager, I received some training from the HR department, and we were constantly reminded that our employees didn't really want to get paid more. This was based on "research." I wondered if this was the result of the researchers simply delivering the result that their patrons wanted to hear. I've decided to favor an economic view over a psychological one: Be nice to people, of course, but treat them as homo economicus, behaving rationally in regard to their own self interest. While this view isn't proven, I think it's better than making assumptions about their psychological motivations that are likely to be biased by factors such as social class, age, gender, and possibly race and ethnicity.
- icelancer 10y ago
  The current hype of not treating people like rational actors - pop-science people citing Tversky and Kahenman, for example - is rooted in what is not controversial at all for anyone who truly grasped basic economics, so-called "behavioral economics." It is no surprise to any classical economist that actors do not always act rationally and the foundation of microeconomics is not built on the unstable platform of assuming that everyone IS rational; but rather that treating actors AS rational is a just and fair way to act while also removing sources of bias. It does not mean that rules on how to approach people should NOT be modified via analysis of behavior, but rather that a priori we should assume people act rationally in their own self-interest as a first principle and go from there, not assume that everyone is irrational and create a ten million line case/switch statement.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > It is no surprise to any classical economist that actors do not always act rationally and the foundation of microeconomics is not built on the unstable platform of assuming that everyone IS rational; but rather that treating actors AS rational is a just and fair way to act while also removing sources of bias. No, economics is a predictive social science, not a system of moral philosophy; the rational choice model has nothing to do with how it is just and fair to treat people. It was the dominant model because despite being self-evidently not fundamentally correct (it assumes a number of things, like perfect knowledge of future outcomes, that no one believes to be literally true or even plausible) it was believed to be an approximation that would predicted results better than any alternative model available at the time, in general and in a wide array of specific cases.
chrismealy 10y ago
"Economics has gained the title Queen of the Social Sciences by choosing solved political problems as its domain." -- Abba Lerner
TheGRS 10y ago
Both areas of study are basically looking at human nature on the macro level, it strikes me as interesting that they are different fields of study at all. While I think they're both worth studying and listening to, neither seem to be totally correct on any one particular subject since the elusive "average person" doesn't appear to exist. Take anyone who might fall into an average category and they will always have outliers in other areas. How many people do you personally know are just following the average human life pattern and never do anything outside of it? People are just inherently unpredictable and irrational.
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Mikeb85 10y ago
You're assuming economists have influence. The truth is, the best economic policy is almost always politically unpopular, and thus never gets realised, and the most predictive economists often have reason to not share their opinions. Economics as a science is in fine shape, it's politics which is the problem.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  That's a bit of a selection / attribution error. It's not that most economic policy isn't adopted (true -- it turns out there's a whole mess of heterdox economics theory), but that adopted public policy (or far more significantly: legal doctrine) is justified on the basis of some economic theory or another. There's a camp of economists who are particularly capable of developing policy either specifically to, or which incidentally, supports various viewpoints. See as a classic instance, what Adam Smith actually wrote, vs. what he's presented as writing by such influence-peddlers as the Mont Pelerin Society / Atlas Network disinformation industrial complex.
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yummyfajitas 10y ago
The fact that a field misses one prediction doesn't invalidate the entire field. Would you declare climate science invalid because it didn't predict the hiatus?
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  There was no haitus. That is a myth and falsehood you're propogating. http://thebulletin.org/global-warming-“hiatus”7639 http://thebulletin.org/global-warming-“hiatus”7639 The 2007-8 financial crisis is the most significant economic event of the preceeding 78 years. And it was virtually completely unanticipated by mainstream economists. Alan Greenspan, head of the world's most significant central bank, has conceeded his worldview was deeply flawed. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24pan... The Queen of England has asked why no one saw the credit crunch happening. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/3386353/The-Queen-asks-why-no-one-saw-the-credit-crunch-coming.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/338635... So: not only are you incorrect in your example of false predictions, but you're severely discounting the scope of economics' failure here.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Call it what you will - I know the word "hiatus" puts people in a tizzy - the predictions made in the 90's did not correspond to the graph of what actually happened. I have no idea how you would describe 2007-2008 as the most significant economic event of the previous years. It's a minor blip at most. Maybe it's just because I'm not in the US right now, but to me this seems far more significant: https://s3.amazonaws.com/content.washingtonexaminer.biz/web-producers/062816carney-Elephant.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/content.washingtonexaminer.biz/web-... This is also something pretty significant, and predicted quite nicely by economics: https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a9c9410604877c7529d1ea908a5c06e6 https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a9c9410604877c7529d1ea...
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      Warming happened. It didn't happen where it was initially predicted. What are you claiming happened in terms of net atmospheric + ocean warmth? Here's US GDP, percent change from previous year, 1930 - 2016: https://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/files/table-4.pdf https://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/files/table... Wikipedia states that: The financial crisis of 2007–2008, also known as the global financial crisis and the 2008 financial crisis, is considered by many economists to have been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Given that Wikipedia is not in fact a primary source, that's backed with a primary source. Oh, I'm sorry, four: ReferencesEdit "Two top economists agree 2009 worst financial crisis since great depression; risks increase if right steps are not taken". Reuters. 27 February 2009. Retrieved 10 November 2015. Eigner, Peter; Umlauft, Thomas S. (2015-07-01). "The Great Depression(s) of 1929–1933 and 2007–2009? Parallels, Differences and Policy Lessons". MTA-ELTE Crisis History Working Paper No. 2: Hungarian Academy of Science. SSRN 2612243Freely accessible. Eichengreen; O'Rourke. "A tale of two depressions: What do the new data tell us?". VoxEU.org. Retrieved 2016-02-22. Temin, Peter (2010-01-01). "The Great Recession and the Great Depression". National Bureau of Economic Research. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%... Your graphs are utter non sequiturs here, and fail to make any coherent argument, let alone support it.
dredmorbius 10y ago
As someone with a strong background in economics, I think this would be a wonderful idea (reasons scattered through comments in this thread). I do have a question though: What is the central organising question or theme of sociology? For economics, I would answer "the allocation of scarce resources to greatest effect". I'm not sure I can come up with a simlar statement for sociology, and online searches over the past few minutes aren't turning up anything strongly resembling such a statement.
- icelancer 10y ago
  >"the allocation of scarce resources to greatest effect" I'd say this is the goal of macroeconomics, not the entire discipline. And the application of economic public policy tends to be as psuedoscientific and bias-laden as sociology. I say this as someone who is strongly educated in economics and worked as a private economist; I have a lot of love for the field in general. EDIT: The goal of economics, broadly, I think is simply analyzing the allocation of scarce resources across a wide variety of market methods and conditions. Ascribing prescriptive behavior is not something at least half of the discipline is interested in.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    The "scarce resources" definition is typical of Samuelson. I find John Marshall's "ordinary business of life" distressingly vague. Krugman and Wells (2008) give: "economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." I'll argue you've confused macro with micro: macro deals, generally, with inflation, money supply, and foreign exchange. Micro with market allocations and behaviour (under various degrees of competition, monpoly/monopsony, or oligopoly/oligopsony).
dredmorbius 10y ago
A sampling of comments, by economists, on economics. This is a longish listing, but I'll point out that there are mentions here from multiple Nobel prize laureates and from across the spectrum of political inclinations (Piketty and Galbraith on the left to Hayek and Mises on the right). There's long been a strong critique of economics from within the profession, and this listing only touches the surface. The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists. ― Joan Robinson Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. ― John Kenneth Galbraith The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. ― John Kenneth Galbraith …the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences. ― Thomas Piketty Too large a proportion of recent “mathematical” economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols. ― John Maynard Keynes We move from more or less plausible but really arbitrary assumptions, to elegantly demonstrated but irrelevant conclusions. ― Wassily Leontief Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world. ― Ronald Coase The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth. ― Paul Krugman Economics has become increasingly an arcane branch of mathematics rather than dealing with real economic problems. ― Milton Friedman Modern economics is sick. Economics has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding the economic world. Economists have converted the subject into a sort of social mathematics in which analytical rigour is everything and practical relevance is nothing. ― Mark Blaug Economics has never been a science – and it is even less now than a few years ago. ― Paul Samuelson For far too long economists have sought to define themselves in terms of their supposedly scientific methods. In fact, those methods rely on an immoderate use of mathematical models, which are frequently no more than an excuse for occupying the terrain and masking the vacuity of the content. ― Thomas Piketty In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics. ― Ronald Coase https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/ https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/ If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, “what would I do if I were a horse? ― Ronald Coase Any man who is only an economist is unlikely to be a good one. ― F. A. Hayek The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences. ― Ludwig von Mises The use of mathematics has brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it has also brought mortis. ― Robert Heilbroner An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. ― Laurence J. Peter When an economist says the evidence is “mixed,” he or she means that theory says one thing and data says the opposite. ― Richard Thaler The First Law of Economists: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist. The Second Law of Economists: They’re both wrong. ― David Wildasin
strawmart 10y ago
Given that they weave stories that don't fair much better than religious ones, please no.

126 points by pistachiopro 10y ago

Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?" The answer would be rigor. A huge problem with sociology is the dependence on the story. Unfortunately, since the sociologist is often a human with their own biases, they are going to see what they want to see. For example, I purchased the Kindle version of the book the author recommends ("Coming Up Short"). I turned to the appendix, where the author describes her research methodology. And sure enough, the research involves open-ended questions ("Walk me through a typical day at work." "Is there a time you lost a job? Could you describe it?") that could lead the interviewee to respond in any way they want. There are many problems with this, such as : 1) the interviewee may inadvertently invent convenient narratives that provide comfort but aren't accurate, 2) the interviewer may mis-interpret the answers, etc. How are we supposed to develop policy off of this? Sure, it's a great starting point for starting research, but the narrative- or story-based approach should never be the conclusion. This is why economics is so much more trusted. Although economics has flaws, and the study of econometrics can sometimes lead to incorrect conclusions, it at least uses objective data and metrics, which are less susceptible to error, providing a much more grounded approach to policy decisions.

matt4077 10y ago
By "rigor" you mean "math". But economics itself is the best proof that math can be used to cargo-cult your opinions to fame and fortune. While there are some attempts with evidence-based policy, these sciences just aren't really at the point where math is useful (yet). Math mostly requires reducibility: the ability to split it into small parts and look at these individually. That approach worked incredibly well in physics, and with the Manhattan project at the latest, it proved that it was mightier than any human endeavour before it. But while, theoretically, everything could be reduced to physics, that isn't always the level of abstraction that works best. If you're depressed, a physicist isn't going to help you. Medicine may – but a psychologist, even though the discipline is scientifically flawed - is still an important tool in the set available to us. Sociology is psychology on a population-scale. In that regard, it may be almost impossible to reduce because of nonlinear effects, chaos etc. That severely limits applying results from prior experiment X,Y,Z to situation B – because what you usually do is split situation B into components (B1=X,B2=Y,B3=Z,...), each of which is quite generic and has been studied in detail. So you'd have to run your own experiment on B, and the questions of sociology would require you to run an A/B experiment, with both A and B being, for example, New York.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  You seem to be claiming that the results of sociology cannot be predictive, only descriptive. If so, that makes sociology completely useless for policy. A field which cannot predict what will happen next time can't actually inform a policy maker as to whether their policy is useful. Math mostly requires reducibility: the ability to split it into small parts and look at these individually. This is simply false. If this is your criticism of math in economics, it applies equally well to math in geophysics, oceanography, climate science, etc.
  - 1337biz 10y ago
    My fav quote on that: "Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window." (Peter Drucker)
  - devinhelton 10y ago
    The better critique is that math requires homogenous data points. In sociology, every policy implementation is different in a million ways. A welfare program in Sweden is different than one in Chicago. The charter school program in Boston are different than those in Detroit. So doing statistical studies on a question like "do charter schools work" that treats all these implementations as identical, is often not very useful for actually learning something about policy.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      The better critique is that math requires homogenous data points. This critique is similarly wrong. There's a field called "machine learning" - you might have heard of it - which often uses inhomogeneous data points. So doing statistical studies on a question like "do charter schools work" that treats all these implementations as identical, is often not very useful for actually learning something about policy. So instead build a model that understands the important factors which make charter schools work/fail. Then use it. If you can't do this, don't pretend you have anything to say about whether I should implement charter schools.
  - 10y ago
cjustice 10y ago
Modern Western society seems to associate quantitative research with "rigor", and to believe that it is more objective than qualitative studies. Rather than take this approach, I believe it would be more worthwhile to say that all research will be influenced by the author's societal positioning. For example, consider how economists choose what metrics to use in their experiments. It seems to me impossible to say that those choices could ever be unbiased, free of influence by external forces.
jahaja 10y ago
I think you're giving economics the benefit of the doubt while having a critical eye towards sociology when they're not much different in regards to objectivity and being "soft" sciences. In fact I'm not sure sociology would still have its credibility intact if it were to have as many failures as economics have had just the latest 20 years or so. Somehow economics manages this, which leads me to the next point. I'm surprised that you're speaking with such certainty without mentioning the rather powerful relationship between economics and finance in a classical "follow the money" trail of thought.
- trendia 10y ago
  > relationship between economics and finance in a classical "follow the money" trail of thought. What specifically are you claiming?
  - jahaja 10y ago
    That the study of economics has a strong connection to both capital and power while sociology is more academic/institutional and thus less influential.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      This. In spades. J.K. Galbraith (an economist himself) has claimed largely the same himself, and he's hardly the only one (within the field). (Update) Some examples: https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/ https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/
    - trendia 10y ago
      Except for Stiglitz, Borjas, Piketty, etc.
    - sdenton4 10y ago
      True dat. Economics has a number of reformers, in endless battle with an elite who make their names and fortunes by telling power what it wants to hear (and dressing it up with shamanistic differential equations to give the appearance of credibility).
RobertoG 10y ago
"Although economics has flaws [..]" That would be the understatement of the century. Economics theory decide how to organize society resources, so, it's a very loaded subject with a lot of interests trying to decide what is "reality". Economics use complicated maths to justify ideologically determined policy. I propose you a simple exercise. Go to any mainstream economic textbook and read about the fractional reserve system creation of money, that it's supposedly how the system works. Then go and read what the people that are really in charge say about how money is created (pdf from the Bank of England): http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q1prereleasemoneycreation.pdf http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte... If the textbooks in economics are wrong about a basic thing like that, maybe we should start to think carefully about the subject.
- gozur88 10y ago
  >That would be the understatement of the century. Indeed. If it weren't for nutritionists, economists would win the prize for having the discipline most disconnected from reality.
  - jschwartzi 10y ago
    If you read a basic 100-level nutrition textbook, I guarantee you that you'll recant your statement. The problem isn't that the disciplines are disconnected from reality, but that people are treating bleeding-edge research as if it's scientific fact, rather than taking it all with a grain of salt as you would do in another scientific discipline.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      What makes you think I haven't read such a textbook? The problem is the insights in economics are either obvious or dubious, save Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage. Which, I should add, doesn't seem to hold up in practice either.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  The creation of money is actually among the more sensible elements of economics, though fractional reserve lending may not be the best route to doing that (I'm not sure that it is or isn't, though I'm pretty certain it's not the bugbear people claim it is). I'd look at economic definitions of cost, value, and price, of ignoring the reality of thermodynamics, and of much of the theology (Thorstein Veblen uses the term "mythology") surrounding supposedly rationally-acting "homo economicus", market failures, and the role of information, amongst many others. Money is first and principally a mechanism for exchange, and gumming up that role leads to problems. Fractional-reserve and central banking greatly assists in this, and is by and large hugely useful.
crdoconnor 10y ago
"Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?"" It needs to generate 'useful' political recommendations (useful to the 'right' people). "The answer would be rigor." No it absolutely would not. The economics profession has been actively resisting rigor. For instance, Neoclassical (still the default in policy circles) still considers private debt to have no significant macroeconomic effect and presumes, religiously, that markets trend towards equilibrium (particularly in employment). "This is why economics is so much more trusted." It shouldn't be. "it at least uses objective data" Would you have any faith in a model rooted in Newtonian mechanics that assumed away friction just because "it at least uses objective data"?
- raphlinus 10y ago
  The use of math in economics is much like the use of Newtonian mechanics to understand elementary particle interactions at the horizons of black holes.
tasty_freeze 10y ago
Look how much influence the Laffer Curve has had on economic policy, when in fact it is a pretty boring observation that taxation at a rate of 0% produces no income for the government, and taxation at a rate of 100% produces no income for the government (because of the lack of incentive to work), therefore the optimum is somewhere between those two points. That broad idea was enough to argue that the highest tax rates were way too high and had to be cut substantially.
- MagnumOpus 10y ago
  And that is a good example of the disconnect between economics as a social science and politicians instrumentalising some sound bites from economics profs and selling it as "what the economists tell us". There are numerous economics papers studying exactly what is the shape of the Laffer curve both from historical analysis as well as trying to find natural experiments. (IIRC tax revenue peaks at 50-65% tax rates, at least in the short run.) None of the politicians actually know or care about the results of these studies - as long as the sound bite is convenient as a rhetoric device to support their ideology (cutting taxes or raising taxes or whatever, it gets trotted out by politicians. Sadly, ex-economists who definitely do know better are instrumental in this as well. People like Krugman, Mankiw or indeed Laffer got a large audience based on genuine rigorous contributions from 10 or 20 years ago - and then promptly ignore all that rigor, uncertainty and intellectual honesty when they get the offer of a $10million/year payday and a chance to mold the world according to their ideology from politicians and media. It is the same thing with international trade, it is the same thing with state-vs-private ownership and natural monopolies, it is the same thing with costs/benefits of demographic change and migration.
ipsin 10y ago
It seems pretty clear that you don't like qualitative sociology, but do you have a problem with the rigor of quantitative sociology, as it is currently practiced?
yxwvut 10y ago
Reading the replies you're getting, it seems the average HN commenter: A. Has never read an economics research paper B. Only know economics as monetary policy (or macro more broadly), and as a libertarian is inherently skeptical. Currently, most of the interesting research being done in econ is outside of theoretical macro, so the knee jerk libertarian "economics is broken" meme doesn't hold much water as the topics and methods are pretty dissimilar. A developmental microeconomics field study in rural India is a different beast entirely from a macro theory paper. For a sample of the diversity of economics research, see here: http://www.nber.org/papersbyprog/ http://www.nber.org/papersbyprog/ Returning to your comment, the issue of storytelling, in a nutshell, was what drove me crazy when working closely with qualitative sociologists. Trying to discuss falsifiability in their study design was maddening. Sociology doesn't need to adopt the same research model as applied economics but they do need a serious look at their research methods, and I have more respect for those who try to take a quantitative approach. Many of the sociologists I worked with would turn up their noses at the phrase "computational social science" and were loathe to discuss issues like biased sampling, but the best ones (IMO) used qualitative observations to drive later large-scale quantitative study, which I think should be the de-facto standard for social science research. Their reliance on ethnographic studies can be useful for verifying the existence of some phenomenon you have a hunch exists in some form, but such research is woefully biased and wholly inadequate as a means of measuring the prevalence or magnitude of a phenomenon, which is why economics studies (or quantitative methods more broadly) tend to have more credence when presenting evidence on the same subjects.
- RobertoG 10y ago
  "most of the interesting research being done in econ is outside of theoretical macro" I'm not sure why that save economics from the discussion, when it's the theoretical macro what have a huge influence in the life of billions of persons and the title of the article we are discussing is "If Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists". The libertarian comment is uncalled for, as most of the comments here don't express a political view, only criticism of the discipline.
  - yxwvut 10y ago
ajb 10y ago
You say sociological methodology leads the researcher to project their own biases onto the data, but the method you criticise- open questions - is precisely designed to avoid this. The sociological methodology most focussed on avoiding researcher bias is Grounded Theory[1]. It follows the collection of data via open-ended questions and interviews with further techniques to analyse this unstructured data in a way that avoids introducing preconceived ideas from the researcher (coding, etc). The problem with pointing to qualitative techniques as more rigorous and less biassed, is that the bias - when it comes to data about people- often lies in the decision what to measure - especially when categorising - and how to interpret the numerical result when you have (rigorously) processed it. That is as susceptible to preconceptions of the researcher. It's just easier for an economist to hide behind the rigour applied to the quantitative part. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory
- TheGRS 10y ago
  Agreed, yes/no questions can often be leading and may come to totally inaccurate conclusions. With open-ended questions you may get a rich answer with a lot of bias, but at least the answer is rich and you can sift through the data gathered. Its just not nearly as efficient as a "rate on a scale of 1-10" or "yes or no" questionnaire. But the devil is always in the details.
jccalhoun 10y ago
As someone who got minored in Anthropology in my phd program, I like qualitative because it is descriptive. Quantitative work are best at telling us what answers people gave or a numerical summary of what people did. It can't tell us why people gave that answer or why they did what they did.
- weberc2 10y ago
  Unfortunately, we can't even trust this qualitative work, because it is produced by an ideologically homogeneous body. It's not possible to remove the confirmation bias. These departments often seem more like clergy than scientists.
mathattack 10y ago
Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?" The answer would be rigor. A huge problem with sociology is the dependence on the story. Unfortunately, since the sociologist is often a human with their own biases, they are going to see what they want to see. This is exactly it. They can't prove what they know, or make good predictions. When you insert yourself into the story, you can't shake confirmation bias. Economics is still shaky science, but the economists at least try to get on stronger fundamental footing.
aphextron 10y ago
>The answer would be rigor. A huge problem with sociology is the dependence on the story. Unfortunately, since the sociologist is often a human with their own biases, they are going to see what they want to see. This is the exact problem, yet it is hard to get someone in the social sciences to admit it in my experience. For instance, I am a computer science student, and I'm currently taking a political science class as part of my university requirements. A recent exam question was worded in multiple choice format, to the effect that the professor was seeking an exact specific answer to a completely subjective question, such as "What is the most important issue facing China as it's population continues to grow?". It's completely absurd, and you end up with an exam full of questions with one "correct" answer, and a bunch of nonsensical gibberish for the other options. This lack of imprecision drives me absolutely mad. I understand that social sciences are inherently dealing with subject matter that is harder to quantify than, say, computer science. But the issue is when one asserts that scientific conclusions can be made about these subjects when no formal system of reasoning exists. To quote from a recent article I read, "Until we have a deep understanding of the brain, we can't shape falsifiable, general theories about it, and mind studies cannot provide a reliable understanding of the brain. In short, no theory, no falsifiability, no science." http://arachnoid.com/psychology_and_alchemy/ http://arachnoid.com/psychology_and_alchemy/ In short, if social scientists simply accepted that their fields do not fit the traditional rigors of science, it would do much to alleviate the issue. Studying these things can still provide valuable, actionable insight. But to treat it on par with the natural sciences is fraudulent.
- vacri 10y ago
  > But to treat it on par with the natural sciences is fraudulent. ... because economics is a natural science?
khawkins 10y ago
In addition, sociology as a practice seems to tie itself deeply to activism. When it does so, the credibility of sociology as a scientific pursuit weakens. Compare, for example, at Colombia University, the Department of Sociology homepage http://sociology.columbia.edu/ http://sociology.columbia.edu/ and the Department of Economoics http://econ.columbia.edu/ http://econ.columbia.edu/. The sociology page features a huge image of a protest of the recent immigration executive orders. The economics page, on the other hand, features upcoming talks like "Iceland's Road to Recovery" and "Modern Financial Markets: The Role of High-Frequency Trading". The sociology department is signaling that they're passionate about ideological issues, while the economics department is signaling that they're focused on understanding and analyzing. People trust scientists because people believe they are willing and able to divorce their emotions and vested interests from an objective pursuit of the truth. Sociology seems to fail that test time after time.
- RodericDay 10y ago
  > Compare, for example, at Colombia University, the Department of Sociology homepage http://sociology.columbia.edu/ http://sociology.columbia.edu/ and the Department of Economoics http://econ.columbia.edu/ http://econ.columbia.edu/. The sociology page features a huge image of a protest of the recent immigration executive orders. The economics page, on the other hand, features upcoming talks like "Iceland's Road to Recovery" and "Modern Financial Markets: The Role of High-Frequency Trading". The sociology department is signaling that they're passionate about ideological issues, while the economics department is signaling that they're focused on understanding and analyzing. How can you conjure up this example, and conclude that only sociology is ideological?
  - barry-cotter 10y ago
    > How can you conjure up this example, and conclude that only sociology is ideological? Would it be better if he had said that the Economics department seems to aspire to centrist technocracy and the Sociology department varies from left wing to far left?
    - 10y ago
vacri 10y ago
> The answer would be rigor. Nonsense. Back to the original question, the reason why economics has influence is because it involves money. The people who hold the purse strings talk in that language, and those people always pay themselves first. Sociology could have perfect rigor, beyond that of any other disciple, but it would never have the influence of economics.
RodericDay 10y ago
> Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?" Become obsequious towards those in power? Find out rationalizations for our current state of affairs? Come up with reasons why we live in the best of all possible worlds? Joan Robinson once put it pretty concisely, "The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."
sfifs 10y ago
In marketing research, the normal approach tends to use sociology type research to generate hypothesis and ideas which you then either test quantitatively with rigor or through in market testing. Sometimes, if the narrative research is convincing enough, you might directly skip to an in market test execution.
ucaetano 10y ago
"The answer would be rigor." It reminds me of the often-cited Stanford Prison Experiment. The lack of any rigor during the experiment is usually ignored when the findings are discussed. The "experiment" had no control group, or even a separation between the observers and the ones involved in the experiment (Zimbardo was both the prison chief and the lead researcher). From an experimental setup point of view, it was just an amateurish mess.
icelancer 10y ago
The number of responses to this post broadly implicating macroeconomics as psuedoscience are pounding nails into their own coffins considering macroeconomics and the applications of the study tend to be sociological in nature. There's no psuedoscience behind microeconomic analysis of market interactions at the lower levels; they very well model how markets, businesses, exchanges of value, etc operate.
- the_why_of_y 10y ago
  Some practically useless models of macroeconomics (Real Business Cycle theory) pride themselves in being fully "microfounded", i.e., being based only on the basic assumptions of microeconomics. The uselessness is then demonstrated by proclamations that the doubling of the unemployment rate in the recent financial crisis is caused by 10s of millions of workers suddenly developing a preference for leisure over work.
MR4D 10y ago
There are many people who would disagree with your thoughts on economists being rigorous - at least about data that is relevant. For instance, this article ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/390063/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article... ). This joke probably sums up what many people think of economists: Q: Why did God create economists? A: In order to make weather forecasters look good.

devinhelton 10y ago

Sociologists have had a very large impact on policy in the last century. For example, the hundreds of billions spent on public housing was based on ideas that came out of sociology -- https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dvPJvrleZI_wckWhjsRNPPRl4xU=/1000x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4432835/LOC02hr.0.jpg https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dvPJvrleZI_wckWhjsRNPPRl4xU... It just didn't work. And a large body of sociological research touches on the idea of stigmatization, including of the poor and of racial minorities. Many school reforms ideas (desegregation, elimination of corporal punishment, reducing emphasis on rote learning, etc) were based on this theory. The Brown versus Board of Education decision cited sociological research along these lines, for example. But the theories were wrong, so the solutions did not work. Professor Raymond Wolters has two exhaustive (if depressing) histories of these reforms and their failures. See The Long Crusade: Profiles in Education Reform, 1967-2014 and The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation It’s one thing, for example, to outlaw housing discrimination based on race. But if real estate agents and would-be home sellers subtly shun minority buyers, the effect can be the same. Professor Gans of Columbia has argued for decades that the stigmatization of poor Americans fuels entrenched, persistent poverty. Sociologists haven't been ignored -- this was the theory behind Section 8 Vouchers which is a very large program. But again, the theory was wrong and the solutions did not work. See https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/306872/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/america... and http://devinhelton.com/historical-amnesia.html http://devinhelton.com/historical-amnesia.html

rayiner 10y ago
Desegregation didn't work?
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  As a school reform idea, no. Putting blacks into the general vicinity of whites does not appear to cause them to have better educational outcomes. I don't find this too surprising, actually. It would be pretty strange if white people emitted pheremones (or whatever) that improve the educational performance of people around them.

dvt 10y ago

I've found sociology and its approaches to be profoundly insightful. Even though I'm a trained philosopher, one of my favorite thinkers is not a philosopher, but Max Weber, the founding father of sociology. Economists probably have more influence due to the fact that economics is perceived to be a "hard science". The irony, of course, is that it isn't.

VladKovac 10y ago
Max Weber's theories on Protestantism being the cause of success in America have been pretty much thoroughly debunked when you control for differences in aptitude amongst the religious sects that arrived to America in it's early history. Not to mention his work led to the founding ideas of the Frankfurt School lol.
- dvt 10y ago
  This post is just a bunch of nonsense. His theories on the Protestant ethic are controversial[1], but hardly "thoroughly debunked." As far as the Frankfurt School, uh, who cares? They drew from many political and social philosophies (including Marx who we often find at odds with Weber). It just seems completely uncharitable and tangential to bring it up. [1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/08/29/is_the_protestant_work_ethic_real_a_new_study_claims_it_can_be_measured.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/08/29/is_the_prot...
  - clydethefrog 10y ago
    Bringing them up in a negative way is usually used as a dogwhistle for people that believe in the "cultural Marxism" conspiracy.
- bobcostas55 10y ago
  While Weber over-stated his case, he has definitely not been "debunked". Check out _Causes and Consequences of the Protestant Reformation_ by Becker et al[0], it's a survey of the literature and contains a lot of empirical evidence in support of the Weberian view of the Reformation. [0] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d680/a29a28682b933d75e35d5aec902c843ab770.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d680/a29a28682b933d75e35d5a...

ori_b 10y ago

I find it interesting that the article doesn't mention actions that might be taken if sociologists had more influence. Not a word about what we might do differently.

Natsu 10y ago
I find it interesting because one could argue that you should be able to apply a sort of success filter to either discipline to see who is skilled at what they do. For example: How many rich economists are there? How many influential sociologists are there?
dredmorbius 10y ago
There's some indirect references, but yes, a good point: that's a pretty glaring lack. The comments about the social interactions of what are perceived as economic transactions or phenmomena strongly suggests a few differences. The social dislocations caused by job loss, or housing eviction, are specifically mentioned. I'd see far more weight and consideration given both in policy.

ianai 10y ago

I think this is a false premise. Politicians/decision makers merely listen to people they want to listen to speak. There are "schools of thought" in economics that really only exist because someone wants to hear that viewpoint.

Mendenhall 10y ago

Then bad ideas propagated by non replicable "science" would spread even more rampant.

dredmorbius 10y ago
Then bad ideas propagated by non replicable "science" would have a counterargument.

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camdenlock 10y ago

> For starters, while economists tend to view a job as a straightforward exchange of labor for money, a wide body of sociological research shows how tied up work is with a sense of purpose and identity. This is precisely why handing the reins over to sociologists would be dangerous. The concept of "identity" is massively over-valued in our society, with very little coherent critical commentary available. Somehow it's seen as an unassailable, unquestionable truism: every person has an identity, and they build on it throughout their entire life. Giving sociologist-types more power to shape policy will lead to an increase in the acceptance and enforcement of this erroneous thought process. Erroneous because one's "identity" is, in reality, of extremely limited utility and the source of much suffering: does my identity properly reflect who I really am? Are others being respectful to my identity? Are they behaving correctly toward me considering my identity? Is my identity subject to systematic oppression? Should I change my identity or keep it the same? How many people know about my current identity vs. my precious identity that I promoted for many years? Spending time ruminating and basing policy on this concept of identity is a huge waste of resources, and what's the outcome? Pure, unadulterated suffering. Identity has its place as a tool for conducting transactions and working in groups, but sociologists and their ilk have elevated it to an all-encompassing life-defining concern, and that's just not reasonable. Given how much we're already burdening ourselves here in the West with identity politics and other massive wastes of resources, I cringe at the thought of sociologists having MORE power over our lives.

dredmorbius 10y ago
If you don't mind my asking, what do you do?
- camdenlock 10y ago
  I make music and sell it. Not very lucrative, but it's fulfilling. Do you think my career choice is relevant to my distrust of the western obsession with identity? :)
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    How strongly do you identify with the instruments, genres, venues, media, etc., in which this profession takes you?

NumberCruncher 10y ago

In my experience sociologists would like to do the work of the statisticians without working with big scale data and without understanding even the most simple statistical models. Thank's god they do not have more influence. This statement is based on a study I made by myself using a representative sample: I have 3 sociology PHDs in my team.

cs2818 10y ago

Maybe this is just relative to my area of work, but I often feel that the sociologists I work/am friends with are in a dangerous balancing act of attempting to influence policy while also conducting unbiased research inquiries. While this isn't completely unique to sociology, I would argue that the area of study can make it difficult to form research questions and studies which are not confounded by current public policy or personal opinion. To me it would seem intuitive to have an additional field or area of focus that emphasizes applying sociological findings to public policy.

schoen 10y ago
A particular elephant in the room here might be that economists also not uncommonly engage in policy advocacy, yet the stereotypical sociologist's political advocacy is left-wing and the stereotypical economist's political advocacy is right-wing, at least relative to one another. Maybe one part of that is that the two have fairly different understandings of what makes human societies tick.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Economics has avoided this dilemma by disposing of unbiased research. W. Brian Arthur has pointed out that virtually all significant economic research explores specific policy questions of the day. Usually with a particular point of view in mind. The results can be ... amusing. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4xe2k1/chambers_encyclopaedia_editorial_statement/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4xe2k1/chamber...

analog31 10y ago

For starters, while economists tend to view a job as a straightforward exchange of labor for money, a wide body of sociological research shows how tied up work is with a sense of purpose and identity. Amusingly, I've noticed that most HR managers have psychology degrees. I've wondered: What if HR managers had economics degrees. Would we be paid more? When I was a manager, I received some training from the HR department, and we were constantly reminded that our employees didn't really want to get paid more. This was based on "research." I wondered if this was the result of the researchers simply delivering the result that their patrons wanted to hear. I've decided to favor an economic view over a psychological one: Be nice to people, of course, but treat them as homo economicus, behaving rationally in regard to their own self interest. While this view isn't proven, I think it's better than making assumptions about their psychological motivations that are likely to be biased by factors such as social class, age, gender, and possibly race and ethnicity.

icelancer 10y ago
The current hype of not treating people like rational actors - pop-science people citing Tversky and Kahenman, for example - is rooted in what is not controversial at all for anyone who truly grasped basic economics, so-called "behavioral economics." It is no surprise to any classical economist that actors do not always act rationally and the foundation of microeconomics is not built on the unstable platform of assuming that everyone IS rational; but rather that treating actors AS rational is a just and fair way to act while also removing sources of bias. It does not mean that rules on how to approach people should NOT be modified via analysis of behavior, but rather that a priori we should assume people act rationally in their own self-interest as a first principle and go from there, not assume that everyone is irrational and create a ten million line case/switch statement.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > It is no surprise to any classical economist that actors do not always act rationally and the foundation of microeconomics is not built on the unstable platform of assuming that everyone IS rational; but rather that treating actors AS rational is a just and fair way to act while also removing sources of bias. No, economics is a predictive social science, not a system of moral philosophy; the rational choice model has nothing to do with how it is just and fair to treat people. It was the dominant model because despite being self-evidently not fundamentally correct (it assumes a number of things, like perfect knowledge of future outcomes, that no one believes to be literally true or even plausible) it was believed to be an approximation that would predicted results better than any alternative model available at the time, in general and in a wide array of specific cases.

chrismealy 10y ago

"Economics has gained the title Queen of the Social Sciences by choosing solved political problems as its domain." -- Abba Lerner

TheGRS 10y ago

Both areas of study are basically looking at human nature on the macro level, it strikes me as interesting that they are different fields of study at all. While I think they're both worth studying and listening to, neither seem to be totally correct on any one particular subject since the elusive "average person" doesn't appear to exist. Take anyone who might fall into an average category and they will always have outliers in other areas. How many people do you personally know are just following the average human life pattern and never do anything outside of it? People are just inherently unpredictable and irrational.

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Mikeb85 10y ago

You're assuming economists have influence. The truth is, the best economic policy is almost always politically unpopular, and thus never gets realised, and the most predictive economists often have reason to not share their opinions. Economics as a science is in fine shape, it's politics which is the problem.

dredmorbius 10y ago
That's a bit of a selection / attribution error. It's not that most economic policy isn't adopted (true -- it turns out there's a whole mess of heterdox economics theory), but that adopted public policy (or far more significantly: legal doctrine) is justified on the basis of some economic theory or another. There's a camp of economists who are particularly capable of developing policy either specifically to, or which incidentally, supports various viewpoints. See as a classic instance, what Adam Smith actually wrote, vs. what he's presented as writing by such influence-peddlers as the Mont Pelerin Society / Atlas Network disinformation industrial complex.
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yummyfajitas 10y ago

The fact that a field misses one prediction doesn't invalidate the entire field. Would you declare climate science invalid because it didn't predict the hiatus?

dredmorbius 10y ago
There was no haitus. That is a myth and falsehood you're propogating. http://thebulletin.org/global-warming-“hiatus”7639 http://thebulletin.org/global-warming-“hiatus”7639 The 2007-8 financial crisis is the most significant economic event of the preceeding 78 years. And it was virtually completely unanticipated by mainstream economists. Alan Greenspan, head of the world's most significant central bank, has conceeded his worldview was deeply flawed. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24pan... The Queen of England has asked why no one saw the credit crunch happening. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/3386353/The-Queen-asks-why-no-one-saw-the-credit-crunch-coming.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/338635... So: not only are you incorrect in your example of false predictions, but you're severely discounting the scope of economics' failure here.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Call it what you will - I know the word "hiatus" puts people in a tizzy - the predictions made in the 90's did not correspond to the graph of what actually happened. I have no idea how you would describe 2007-2008 as the most significant economic event of the previous years. It's a minor blip at most. Maybe it's just because I'm not in the US right now, but to me this seems far more significant: https://s3.amazonaws.com/content.washingtonexaminer.biz/web-producers/062816carney-Elephant.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/content.washingtonexaminer.biz/web-... This is also something pretty significant, and predicted quite nicely by economics: https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a9c9410604877c7529d1ea908a5c06e6 https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a9c9410604877c7529d1ea...
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Warming happened. It didn't happen where it was initially predicted. What are you claiming happened in terms of net atmospheric + ocean warmth? Here's US GDP, percent change from previous year, 1930 - 2016: https://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/files/table-4.pdf https://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/files/table... Wikipedia states that: The financial crisis of 2007–2008, also known as the global financial crisis and the 2008 financial crisis, is considered by many economists to have been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Given that Wikipedia is not in fact a primary source, that's backed with a primary source. Oh, I'm sorry, four: ReferencesEdit "Two top economists agree 2009 worst financial crisis since great depression; risks increase if right steps are not taken". Reuters. 27 February 2009. Retrieved 10 November 2015. Eigner, Peter; Umlauft, Thomas S. (2015-07-01). "The Great Depression(s) of 1929–1933 and 2007–2009? Parallels, Differences and Policy Lessons". MTA-ELTE Crisis History Working Paper No. 2: Hungarian Academy of Science. SSRN 2612243Freely accessible. Eichengreen; O'Rourke. "A tale of two depressions: What do the new data tell us?". VoxEU.org. Retrieved 2016-02-22. Temin, Peter (2010-01-01). "The Great Recession and the Great Depression". National Bureau of Economic Research. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%... Your graphs are utter non sequiturs here, and fail to make any coherent argument, let alone support it.

dredmorbius 10y ago

As someone with a strong background in economics, I think this would be a wonderful idea (reasons scattered through comments in this thread). I do have a question though: What is the central organising question or theme of sociology? For economics, I would answer "the allocation of scarce resources to greatest effect". I'm not sure I can come up with a simlar statement for sociology, and online searches over the past few minutes aren't turning up anything strongly resembling such a statement.

icelancer 10y ago
>"the allocation of scarce resources to greatest effect" I'd say this is the goal of macroeconomics, not the entire discipline. And the application of economic public policy tends to be as psuedoscientific and bias-laden as sociology. I say this as someone who is strongly educated in economics and worked as a private economist; I have a lot of love for the field in general. EDIT: The goal of economics, broadly, I think is simply analyzing the allocation of scarce resources across a wide variety of market methods and conditions. Ascribing prescriptive behavior is not something at least half of the discipline is interested in.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  The "scarce resources" definition is typical of Samuelson. I find John Marshall's "ordinary business of life" distressingly vague. Krugman and Wells (2008) give: "economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." I'll argue you've confused macro with micro: macro deals, generally, with inflation, money supply, and foreign exchange. Micro with market allocations and behaviour (under various degrees of competition, monpoly/monopsony, or oligopoly/oligopsony).

dredmorbius 10y ago

A sampling of comments, by economists, on economics. This is a longish listing, but I'll point out that there are mentions here from multiple Nobel prize laureates and from across the spectrum of political inclinations (Piketty and Galbraith on the left to Hayek and Mises on the right). There's long been a strong critique of economics from within the profession, and this listing only touches the surface. The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists. ― Joan Robinson Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. ― John Kenneth Galbraith The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. ― John Kenneth Galbraith …the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences. ― Thomas Piketty Too large a proportion of recent “mathematical” economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols. ― John Maynard Keynes We move from more or less plausible but really arbitrary assumptions, to elegantly demonstrated but irrelevant conclusions. ― Wassily Leontief Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world. ― Ronald Coase The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth. ― Paul Krugman Economics has become increasingly an arcane branch of mathematics rather than dealing with real economic problems. ― Milton Friedman Modern economics is sick. Economics has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding the economic world. Economists have converted the subject into a sort of social mathematics in which analytical rigour is everything and practical relevance is nothing. ― Mark Blaug Economics has never been a science – and it is even less now than a few years ago. ― Paul Samuelson For far too long economists have sought to define themselves in terms of their supposedly scientific methods. In fact, those methods rely on an immoderate use of mathematical models, which are frequently no more than an excuse for occupying the terrain and masking the vacuity of the content. ― Thomas Piketty In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics. ― Ronald Coase https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/ https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/ If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, “what would I do if I were a horse? ― Ronald Coase Any man who is only an economist is unlikely to be a good one. ― F. A. Hayek The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences. ― Ludwig von Mises The use of mathematics has brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it has also brought mortis. ― Robert Heilbroner An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. ― Laurence J. Peter When an economist says the evidence is “mixed,” he or she means that theory says one thing and data says the opposite. ― Richard Thaler The First Law of Economists: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist. The Second Law of Economists: They’re both wrong. ― David Wildasin

strawmart 10y ago

Given that they weave stories that don't fair much better than religious ones, please no.