"Wicked" doesn't mean bad, it means there are inherent difficulties in testing and implementation. The Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics is what it is. Both H

"Wicked" doesn't mean bad, it means there are inherent difficulties in testing and implementation. The Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics is what it is. Both Hayek and Friedman both won it, even though they have very different ideas about how the economy should be run. As did Paul Krugman. Yet I've seen no one mention his Nobel prize when it comes time to criticize him. Even looking at what her study that won her the Nobel showed: "Banerjee, Duflo and their co-authors concluded that students appeared to learn nothing from additional days at school. Neither did spending on textbooks seem to boost learning, even though the schools in Kenya lacked many essential inputs. Moreover, in the Indian context Banerjee and Duflo intended to study, many children appeared to learn little: in results from field tests in the city of Vadodara fewer than one in five third-grade students could correctly answer first-grade curriculum math test questions." You can only get those results by implementing the solution. You can only know it doesn't work by trying it and seeing it doesn't work. That's part of what makes the problem wicked. And unlike one of the people who responded who wanted to use my statement as support for saying economics is not a "real science". What it really means, is that this shit is hard because it is incredibly hard to conduct experiments in ways that don't irreparably harm some group.