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I am a physicist working on complex systems. When I read Krugman I get the vibe of a scientific peer using the scientific method within the constraints of the i

• dnautics 13y ago
  I'm a biochemist engineering an enzyme, when I read Krugman I get the vibe of someone who uses the veneer of the structure of the scientific method to delude himself into thinking that he isn't operating in the realm of confirmation bias. I could also be biased: When I was a (math major) undergrad holding study sessions for lower-level mathematicians at a school with a very prestigious econ department, I recall the econ students coming to me with problems that seem to be specifically concocted to satisfy a culture that valued 'make a model such that you can take the gnarliest derivative possible so that you can remind everyone that you actually could pass calculus'. Gnarly derivatives, of course, rarely correspond to honestly measurable quantities (up to error). There was also NO dimensional analysis, so often equations would have the same term in an exponent, as a sum, and as a divisor. In the real sciences for 90% of useful things, we take advantage of taylor's theorem and call everything locally linear.