First, Tyler Cowen writes.
Cowen’s First Law: There is something wrong with everything (by which I mean there are few decisive or knockdown articles or arguments, and furthermore until you have found the major flaws in an argument, you do not understand it).
His other two laws are at the link.
Below are Kling’s three laws, but note that they come from Merle Kling, my late father, who taught political science at Washington University in the 1950s and 1960s. He called them the three iron laws of social science.
1. Sometimes it’s this way, and sometimes it’s that way.
2. The data are insufficient.
3. The methodology is flawed.
I do not claim to have three laws, although I think I could endorse both Tyler Cowen’s and Merle Kling’s. I am willing to stick up for the Null Hypothesis, although it is a hypothesis and not a law.
Your father’s “laws” are a lot more meaningful than Cowen’s.
Maybe I’m too hard science (or maybe I’m just bad at puffery), but mine would be “or the methodology is fine but the conclusions are overly ambitious and the discussion is puffery.” Most of the effort is just trying to get the damn thing to work.
Willman’s laws (closer to M. Kling than T. Cowen)
1. Life is NOT a hypothetical exercise.
2. There are no panaceas.
3. You don’t know, and I don’t either.
I like both sets of laws. Cowen’s second law is particularly helpful.
The Null Hypothesis seems the most useful of all, though. As soon as your blog posts got me thinking about it, I started to see it everywhere.
Kudos to your old man for seeing where this was going.
What’s the word for the opposite of science? You know, the passion to do everything possible to present your view in the best possible light. Politics? Marketing?
I think that’s it. ‘Social Marketing’. What do you think?
The First Law of Econometrics: The data are out to get you.