Listen now | Starring Zach Carter; with Noah Smith & Brad DeLong :: 30:00 < [Length of Weekly Podcast] < 60:00: Key Insights: “This time, for sure!…” Are the Democrats Bullwinkle Moose or Rocket J. Squirrel “that trick never works!” in hoping that they can get a high-investment high-productivity growth full-employment high-wage growth economy, and then the political life for true equality of opportunity will be doable?… Milton Friedman is of powerful historical importance as one of the principal creators of our still-neoliberal world, but his ideas now—whether monetarism, or his assumption that all political organizations and policies everywhere and always are inescably rent-seeking grifters—are now of historical interests only… We are coquetting with the modes of expression of Antonio Gramsci today, aren’t we?... Hexapodia!
If ever anyone needed any convincing that economics is not a science, this self-revelatory podcast was it. If Mark Thoma listened to it in his retirement, this would put a nail in his assertion that it was a science. The sorry story of Lysenko-ism is what happens when science fails to follow its methodology and becomes politicized to fit the prevailing politics. Science will "follow the money" but over my lifetime I cannot think of any examples where science changed its beliefs about nature dependent on some ideology. It might be repressed, as in the GOPs attempts to defund research into areas they disapprove, or in denial, of, or it may be funded to support some wrongheaded belief, but science is resolutely self-correcting and one doesn't get factions arguing over major issues like evolution vs creationism once the experiments have shown which is correct. Continental Drift is the only example I can think of where there was dispute, but geologists and planetary scientists no longer question it. Similarly, the Moon landings settled whether lunar cratering was volcanic or due to impacts. Economics doesn't seem to settle much at all, and factions can continue to disagree over decades (centuries?) over how the macro-economy works. And now I hear how which belief an economist can hold depends on which group he works with. Just imagine if this is how science dealt with the pandemic and the advice was supportive of the political party that was in power. While scientists tempered their advice in fear of losing their jobs, I didn't read of any outsight support of crazy ideas.
The podcast also raised the clear difference in economist's view of the world as rational homo economics and how people really behave. The futility of expecting people to be less racist by demonstrating that they would be better off if they did so runs face on to the social perceptions of those who want to retain their status. In the 1990s, Robert Reich once said that audiences to his talks invariably preferred lower economic growth if it meant that this kept the US ahead of Japan. I suspect the same response would be elicited if China was substituted for Japan. It is the fear of losing a national position in the international hierarchy that drives this. I also don't think this is irrational either but reflects the limitations of economics in addressing real issues that go beyond what the numbers indicate.
I think this is a bit overly charitable towards science. I'd emphasize 2 issues:
1. People who are not actual experts get treated as if they were by the media. Thus, R politicians and sycophants get quoted making pseudo-factual claims about economics. Similarly, anti-vaxxers get their views circulated constantly just as creationists did. That confuses everyone about what the actual experts know.
2. Lots of science is much less capable of certainty. For example, diet recommendations are notoriously malleable, even putting aside the media's irresponsible reporting. The question is where on this spectrum should we see economics: as physics (nah) or as health and fitness advice (a bit harsh, probably).
When I talk about science, I mean practicing scientists in the field. Scientists are rarely certain about their field as they are generally pushing the edge of the unknown. I would say that the further the field of study is towards sociology, the less certain they can be. The same with psychology. Both fields however are situated in humanities departments at universities and not the science departments.
If there is one thing about experts in their field is that they do give straightforward answers to questions from interviewers, unlike politicians who obfuscate and usually parrot the party line no matter how stupid and fact-free it is.
The media, trying to get "balance" and even "conflict" do give equal time to to charlatans. It is infuriating, but until the media stops doing this, there is little one can do. For the viewer, the best is to recognize the real expert and put most of the argument weight on what they have to say.
Nutrition science is a dash of science and lots of poorly done epidemiology. There are almost no longitudinal studies, so x-sectional epidemiology is often used, often confusing correlation with causation and forgetting about not adjusting for multiple testing. Having been involved in supporting a nutrition course at university (ugh) all I can say is that the textbook was mostly opinion based on scanty data and dressed up as knowledge. The other issue is the influence of food industry groups to bias the dietary recommendations. Compare governmental recommendations for diet across the US and UK for example. How can the differences be based on science? The answer, they cannot. It is no wonder that dietary recommendations swing back and forth.
It is said that history is written by the winners. When histories are rewritten with new evidence there can be an awful conflict - with claims of "revisionism". Just look at the issue of the history of the battle of the Alamo in Texas currently in the news. macro economists studying economic history can similarly view events through very different lenses. I have no idea how the field can determine which lens is more correct based on the evidence provided. Keynesians and Monetarists seem to view the causes of the Great Depression very differently, and that is reflected in the political parties' policies. having read through Piketty's "Capital in teh 21st Century", what I thought was a very well-supported thesis was castigated by many people (expert or not) in the media. I have no tools to determine where the truth lies as there is no way to propose hypotheses and experimentally test them.
I deliberately picked nutrition the worst field that can plausibly be described as "science". If my doctor wants to set my broken arm, I let him do it without question. If he tells me what my diet should be, I'm "yeah, whatever". That said, if nutrition gets pursued as a science I think there may eventually be reliable answers. I'm less confident about economics. And it surely has all the drawbacks of nutrition (interested parties, political bias, etc.) of nutrition in addition to a probably more difficult area of study (people are reasonably similar, whereas economies can vary widely over time and space).
There is some real science in nutrition - e.g. the older basics about needing certain vitamins to prevent diseases like scurvy. There are some longitudinal studies, and the Mediterranean diet keeps coming up as good - which I do partially follow. However, people are genetically different, and now we also know that microbiomes are important and split into major clusters.
But most nutrition work regarding diets is very poor and there is rarely the funding to conduct long-term longitudinal studies on a large enough population to get good data on diets. Just the diversity of foods we eat is problematic. We don't eat standard rat chow equivalents all our lives.
If ever anyone needed any convincing that economics is not a science, this self-revelatory podcast was it. If Mark Thoma listened to it in his retirement, this would put a nail in his assertion that it was a science. The sorry story of Lysenko-ism is what happens when science fails to follow its methodology and becomes politicized to fit the prevailing politics. Science will "follow the money" but over my lifetime I cannot think of any examples where science changed its beliefs about nature dependent on some ideology. It might be repressed, as in the GOPs attempts to defund research into areas they disapprove, or in denial, of, or it may be funded to support some wrongheaded belief, but science is resolutely self-correcting and one doesn't get factions arguing over major issues like evolution vs creationism once the experiments have shown which is correct. Continental Drift is the only example I can think of where there was dispute, but geologists and planetary scientists no longer question it. Similarly, the Moon landings settled whether lunar cratering was volcanic or due to impacts. Economics doesn't seem to settle much at all, and factions can continue to disagree over decades (centuries?) over how the macro-economy works. And now I hear how which belief an economist can hold depends on which group he works with. Just imagine if this is how science dealt with the pandemic and the advice was supportive of the political party that was in power. While scientists tempered their advice in fear of losing their jobs, I didn't read of any outsight support of crazy ideas.
The podcast also raised the clear difference in economist's view of the world as rational homo economics and how people really behave. The futility of expecting people to be less racist by demonstrating that they would be better off if they did so runs face on to the social perceptions of those who want to retain their status. In the 1990s, Robert Reich once said that audiences to his talks invariably preferred lower economic growth if it meant that this kept the US ahead of Japan. I suspect the same response would be elicited if China was substituted for Japan. It is the fear of losing a national position in the international hierarchy that drives this. I also don't think this is irrational either but reflects the limitations of economics in addressing real issues that go beyond what the numbers indicate.
I think this is a bit overly charitable towards science. I'd emphasize 2 issues:
1. People who are not actual experts get treated as if they were by the media. Thus, R politicians and sycophants get quoted making pseudo-factual claims about economics. Similarly, anti-vaxxers get their views circulated constantly just as creationists did. That confuses everyone about what the actual experts know.
2. Lots of science is much less capable of certainty. For example, diet recommendations are notoriously malleable, even putting aside the media's irresponsible reporting. The question is where on this spectrum should we see economics: as physics (nah) or as health and fitness advice (a bit harsh, probably).
When I talk about science, I mean practicing scientists in the field. Scientists are rarely certain about their field as they are generally pushing the edge of the unknown. I would say that the further the field of study is towards sociology, the less certain they can be. The same with psychology. Both fields however are situated in humanities departments at universities and not the science departments.
If there is one thing about experts in their field is that they do give straightforward answers to questions from interviewers, unlike politicians who obfuscate and usually parrot the party line no matter how stupid and fact-free it is.
The media, trying to get "balance" and even "conflict" do give equal time to to charlatans. It is infuriating, but until the media stops doing this, there is little one can do. For the viewer, the best is to recognize the real expert and put most of the argument weight on what they have to say.
Nutrition science is a dash of science and lots of poorly done epidemiology. There are almost no longitudinal studies, so x-sectional epidemiology is often used, often confusing correlation with causation and forgetting about not adjusting for multiple testing. Having been involved in supporting a nutrition course at university (ugh) all I can say is that the textbook was mostly opinion based on scanty data and dressed up as knowledge. The other issue is the influence of food industry groups to bias the dietary recommendations. Compare governmental recommendations for diet across the US and UK for example. How can the differences be based on science? The answer, they cannot. It is no wonder that dietary recommendations swing back and forth.
It is said that history is written by the winners. When histories are rewritten with new evidence there can be an awful conflict - with claims of "revisionism". Just look at the issue of the history of the battle of the Alamo in Texas currently in the news. macro economists studying economic history can similarly view events through very different lenses. I have no idea how the field can determine which lens is more correct based on the evidence provided. Keynesians and Monetarists seem to view the causes of the Great Depression very differently, and that is reflected in the political parties' policies. having read through Piketty's "Capital in teh 21st Century", what I thought was a very well-supported thesis was castigated by many people (expert or not) in the media. I have no tools to determine where the truth lies as there is no way to propose hypotheses and experimentally test them.
I deliberately picked nutrition the worst field that can plausibly be described as "science". If my doctor wants to set my broken arm, I let him do it without question. If he tells me what my diet should be, I'm "yeah, whatever". That said, if nutrition gets pursued as a science I think there may eventually be reliable answers. I'm less confident about economics. And it surely has all the drawbacks of nutrition (interested parties, political bias, etc.) of nutrition in addition to a probably more difficult area of study (people are reasonably similar, whereas economies can vary widely over time and space).
There is some real science in nutrition - e.g. the older basics about needing certain vitamins to prevent diseases like scurvy. There are some longitudinal studies, and the Mediterranean diet keeps coming up as good - which I do partially follow. However, people are genetically different, and now we also know that microbiomes are important and split into major clusters.
But most nutrition work regarding diets is very poor and there is rarely the funding to conduct long-term longitudinal studies on a large enough population to get good data on diets. Just the diversity of foods we eat is problematic. We don't eat standard rat chow equivalents all our lives.