It's quite surprising because ever since the "credibility revolution" [0], a major critique of economics is that it focuses too much on issues that are well sui

It's quite surprising because ever since the "credibility revolution" [0], a major critique of economics is that it focuses too much on issues that are well suited to "validating via observation" as you call it, rather than issues that are actually important. For instance, more looking at the effect of soccer victories on inter-ethnic trust [1], fewer grand theories of development. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credibility_revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credibility_revolution [1] https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v110y2020i5p1572-1602.html https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v110y2020i5p1572-1602.h...