Science is ultimately about method, not the degree of certainty. Economics is a science whenever economists use the scientific method, which I understand to mean Karl Popper’s process of starting with particular facts, producing refutable hypotheses and then seeing whether the data reject those hypotheses. Yet the public unfortunately takes the word science to mean “certitude,” and economists (including myself) have too often been guilty of wrapping ourselves in our scientific mantles to make ideological pronouncements seem more compelling. Messrs. Offer and Söderberg suggest that “policy requires more humility” and that economists should face “some downgrading of authority, but not all the way.” I agree with the need for humility but would point out that politicians, pundits and ideologues of all stripes regularly make statements with far less factual basis than most economists.
I think that the public has a sort of binary classification. If it’s “science,” then an expert knows more than the average Joe. If it’s not a science, then anyone’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s. I strongly favor an in-between category, called a discipline. Think of economics as a discipline, where it is possible for avid students to know more than ordinary individuals, but without the full use of the scientific method.
Good point about how a binary classification confuses the issue here. Talking about “The” Scientific Method encourages that unhelpful way of thinking.
There is a spectrum of more and less scientific approaches. Most fundamental to a scientific approach is the idea that all knowledge is provisional and subject to revision in the face of new evidence pointing in a different direction.
I am curious how the idea of discipline conforms to Popper’s research program.
It’s such a silly thing to argue about. Even nobel prize winning physicists have issues (below) with falsification.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/114/Richard_Feynmans_Philosophy_of_Science
@ John Hall. Thanks for the link to the article about Feynman’s view of science. I find it complementary to the Popperian view, not at odds with it. What is “constructive skepticism” but a gentler way of saying that a hypothesis or theory might be falsified, but the act of falsification may point to a better hypothesis or theory?
In any event, I find “discipline” to be an unsatisfactory substitute for “science.” The accumulation of knowledge about economic variables (or pseudo-knowledge such as estimates of GDP) either leads to well-tested, verified, and reproducible theories of economic behavior or it leads to conjectures, of which there are so many opposing ones that it’s “take your pick.” If that’s what makes a discipline, give me the binary choice between science and story-telling. Most of economics seems to be story-telling. “Discipline” is just a fancy word for it. After all, collecting baseball cards and knowing what it says on them could be called a discipline.
Perhaps a useful distinction is that a discipline only identifies propositions that are almost certainly untrue, but has much less success in identifying propositions that are almost certainly true.