Tag Archives: Theory of Science & Methodology

Mainstream economics gets the priorities wrong There is something about the way economists construct their models nowadays that obviously doesn’t sit right. The one-sided, almost religious, insistence on axiomatic-deductivist modelling as the only scientific activity worthy of pursuing in economics still has not given way to methodological pluralism based on ontological considerations (rather than formalistic tractability). In their search for model-based...

The real harm done by Bayesianism The bias toward the superficial and the response to extraneous influences on research are both examples of real harm done in contemporary social science by a roughly Bayesian paradigm of statistical inference as the epitome of empirical argument. For instance the dominant attitude toward the sources of black-white differential in United States unemployment rates (routinely the rates are in a two to one ratio) is...

Emma Frans och konsten att skilja vetenskap från trams Emma Frans’ med rätta prisbelönta bok Larmrapporten är en rolig, kunnig och ack så nödvändig uppgörelse med allehanda pseudo-vetenskapligt trams som sköljer över oss i media nuförtiden. Inte minst i sociala media sprids en massa ‘alternativa fakta’ och nonsens. Även om jag varmt rekommederat studenter, vänner och bekanta att läsa boken, kan jag dock inte låta bli att här — bland mestadels akademiskt...

Randomization — a philosophical device gone astray When giving courses in the philosophy of science yours truly has often had David Papineau’s book Philosophical Devices (OUP 2012) on the reading list. Overall it is a good introduction to many of the instruments used when performing methodological and science theoretical analyses of economic and other social sciences issues. Unfortunately, the book has also fallen prey to the randomization hype that...

Top 10 RCT critiques •Basu, Kaushik (2014) Randomisation, Causality and the Role of Reasoned Intuition •Cartwright, Nancy  (2010) What are randomised controlled trials good for? •Cartwright, Nancy & Hardie, Jeremy (2012) Evidence-Based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing It Better •Deaton, Angus (2009 ) Instruments of development: Randomization in the tropics, and the search for the elusive keys to economic development •Deaton, Angus &...

Randomized experiments — a dangerous idolatry Nowadays many mainstream economists maintain that ‘imaginative empirical methods’ — especially randomized experiments (RCTs) — can help us to answer questions concerning the external validity of economic models. In their view, they are, more or less, tests of ‘an underlying economic model’ and enable economists to make the right selection from the ever-expanding ‘collection of potentially applicable models.’...

True scientific method is open-minded, self-critical, flexible. Scientists are, in short, not as reasonable as they would like to ​think themselves. The great scientists are often true exceptions; they are nearly always attacked by their colleagues for their revolutionary ideas, not by using the standards of reason, but just by appealing​ to prejudices then current.​ Being reasonable takes great skill and great​ sensitivity to the difference between “well-supported” and...

The one philosophy​ of science book every economist​ should read It is not the fact that science occurs that gives the world a structure such that it can be known by men. Rather, it is the fact that the world has such a structure that makes science, whether or not it actually occurs, possible. That is to say, it is not the character of science that imposes a determinate pattern or order on the world; but the order of the world that, under certain...

Why the ‘analytical’ method does not work in economics To be ‘analytical’ is something most people find recommendable. The word ‘analytical’ has a positive connotation. Scientists think deeper than most other people because they use ‘analytical’ methods. In dictionaries, ‘analysis’ is usually defined as having to do with “breaking something down.” But that’s not the whole picture. As used in science, analysis usually means something more specific. It means...

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of...