His point is that policy data, unlike most sources of data in the sciences/computer-science world, is contaminated by behavioral adjustments. This is a point th

His point is that policy data, unlike most sources of data in the sciences/computer-science world, is contaminated by behavioral adjustments. This is a point that was first brought up by the famous (and frequently misunderstood) Lucas critique. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_critique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_critique And the central tenet of the critique has been reaffirmed by decades of meticulous "natural experimental" studies and small-scaled field experiments which show that real-world economic causal effects do not often correspond to observational data on policy changes. Believe it or not, both of you, there are plenty of competent economists working on that exact methodological problem and resolving other statistical issues that are rarely encountered in non-behavioral sciences. James Heckman's works on this topic have been so widely influential, and lauded, that his papers are now frequently taught as canonical texts in graduate-level statistics courses. And this is a guy that started out only wanting to estimate returns to early-childhood education and basically carved out the best way to do it over 10 years. Here's a long review paper by Heckman on the literature on microeconomic policy evaluation: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11259.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w11259.pdf The language is clear, the use of statistical theory and technical concepts is brief but rigorous (the proofs are on p.54 onward), and literally all 80 pages are devoted to reviewing other recent papers on the best statistical methods to analyze policy data towards making accurate causal inferences. Realize the sheer size of that body of work? Maybe, just maybe, there are good academics in every discipline who aren't hopeless idiots that fit into your grandiose stereotypes. And maybe a random one-liner "omg they should look at policy data" isn't exactly a well-informed criticism in the context of the sheer amount of contemporary empirical work that you've never heard of in a discipline that you aren't familiar with.