Sounds like, unsurprisingly, the author hasn't spent that much time considering any of these questions themselves...they just have all the answers for those tha

Sounds like, unsurprisingly, the author hasn't spent that much time considering any of these questions themselves...they just have all the answers for those that do (thanks buddy!). Some questions just deal with issues that are just not quantifiable (even the question he poses about immigration is just not completely quantifiable). And even questions that are quantifiable are often affected by beliefs (i.e. what happened to inflation in the 70s was a consequence, in part, of what people believed about the Philips Curve in the 1960s). Perhaps more relevant: social science went through this phase nearly 100 years ago (in history, more than 100 years ago). And this issue was resolved often more than 50 years ago^. For example in history, EH Carr: people are not objective, arguments are often contingent but there are facts, present your argument, let your reader judge for themselves). The most harmful thing is to claim that there can be objective truth about these issues. Economics has thrown itself against the rocks far too often. The trend towards this in history at mid/end of the 19th century produced some extremely unimportant work. This can also tend towards quackery. I remember a biologist in my local politics dept (relatively prestigious) got a ton of funding because he believed he had found a way to spot the physical attributes of terrorists (srs, not joking, last I checked he had over $1m in funding from govt). Some people, like the author, are just unaware of the wider context. Less preaching about ways to "solve" social science, more listening (btw, in my experience all of the above applies to scientific research too...all research is contingent). ^ We first had the move towards (broadly) logical positivism/empiricism, then to post-modernism when that seemed ridiculous, and now to (imo) a reasonably healthy medium.