7. Science and Pseudoscience

Science and Pseudoscience
Bob Komives
::

While we can compare theory and experiments in microeconomics with findings by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, game theorists, and psychologists; microeconomics provides few connections to the rest of science. It has a fair excuse; it makes no pretensions. Microeconomics limits itself to a narrow subject, the marketplace and interactions that resemble the marketplace.

It is macroeconomics that should connect all of economics to the rest of science. After all, it should take a macro-view, look at the whole. It should overlap in many places with the other sciences. Narrow-viewed microeconomics should nestle comfortably inside. I see the reverse to be more true. Microeconomics forms the underpinnings of today's Macroeconomics. An unfathomable web of rules and rationalizations has spun out of marketplace theories of supply and demand to bind together the larger world of macroeconomics.

For macroeconomics we have something more akin to pseudoscience. It seems to patch together theories that rationalize all of yesterday, fail to predict tomorrow, and that do not lend themselves to testing . The young science of complexity shows that we cannot always expect to predict tomorrow; so prediction cannot be the only test of science. Simple parts can synergize a future whole that has recognizable but unpredictable patterns. There is a better test of science: falsifiability.

Science and pseudoscience are incompatible: astronomy and astrology, evolution and creationism. The separation of macroeconomics from science comes from mutual repulsion between two inherently incompatible bodies of thought. I wish to paraphrase and thank a scholar who commented on the difference between creationism and evolution. I did not hear his name when a radio network interviewed him in 1987 during one resurgence of controversy over those competing explanations of the origin of our species. The difference? Evolution could conceivably be disproved by evidence whereas creationism could not. Thanks to Murray Gell-Mann and his book, The Quark and the Jaguar, I now know to give some credit to philosopher Karl Popper who promoted this falsifiability test for science.

Scientists modify the theories of evolution as they gather new evidence. Creationists are bound by their belief to support their story of creation no matter the changes in the evidence. Today's descriptions of evolution may not be perfectly correct, but they are science. Creationism is a complex pseudoscience that mounts evidence to defend a belief.

Good macroeconomists do practice science. They subscribe to the principle that their theories could be falsified by evidence. But macroeconomics has become so abstruse --and at times defensive-- that it resembles a belief system to be manipulated by politicians rather than nurtured by scientists. Depending on your political viewpoint and the latest fad, macroeconomics is a particular dogma. In 1998 "everybody knows" the federal budget must balance. For a politician in the United States of America to voice doubt in balanced federal budgets might be as harmful to her political career as expressing doubt in the bible. This seems to be the political reality, though even mainstream economics taught every day in our universities gives little importance to budget balancing.

Part of the problem here is that much of the economics that sets public policy has been wrested from the hands of economists. The media seem every day to find someone who calls himself "an economist for the Wall-Street firm of Stock, Broke, and Bond" to say that the market went up, or down, or failed to do either, "because president and congress failed to reach an agreement today to balance the budget (or distribute the surplus)." Of course, even if one statement happens that day to be true, fluctuations in today's market do not prove that balanced budgets are necessary any more than buying an umbrella proves that umbrellas cause rain. The public, however, is left to conclude that what it already knows to be true is true: a federal balanced budget is necessary.

Once upon a time, everybody knew
the earth is the center of the universe.
This was confirmed by religion
and ratified by politicians.
The best scientists of the day spoke doubts.

from: Everybody Knew

The public of 1633 in Europe must also have concluded that what it knew to be true was, in fact, true. Its media reported correctly that Galileo had just recanted his published conclusion that Copernicus was correct. Standing before judges of the Inquisition, Galileo said, no, he no longer believed what he and Copernicus had written. No, the sun is not the center of a solar system of planets. Yes, the planets do revolve around the earth, the center of the universe.

You think Galileo was a great one,
but he wrote heresy in 1632.
He wrote, " Copernicus is right,
our earth circles the sun,
not the other way around. "
You think Galileo was a great one,
but in 1633 he did recant so he would not burn.

Now you too believe
that to the sun belong the planets,
that we live on one example of them,
our sun-centered revolution,
a scientific revelation,
from a genius then among them
a religious revolution,
insult to god above them.

One way or another,
believers go early, but truth stays late.
Yes, die for your country to get a plaque.
Yes, die for your religion to get guaranteed heaven.
But why die for your science to get guaranteed hell?
Why should you burn for your solar system?

Is the martyr more hero than the genius?
We well know how to make you a martyr,
but we lack the weapon to make you a genius.

How can you resist?
How can you insist:
that Earth is a sphere,
if it is healthier to talk "flat"?
that we came from evolution,
if the inquisition favors special creation?
that all peoples are equal,
if we preach one-ethnic perfection?

Recant today so you will not burn.
Choose humbly to not-believe what you believe.
Humility is a sign of greatness.
For everybody knows and the bible humbly shows
our Earth to be center to the universe.

You think Galileo was a great one
for finding the motion of the pendulum,
the equal rates of falling objects,
and, of course, our telescope.
But then he wrote that Copernicus is right.
You think Galileo was a great one
--but then he did recant
--but then he did not burn.

You Think Galileo Was A Great One

What-everybody-knows is often not true. What everybody knows about the economy is often wrong, but serious economists, when they are asked, seem unable to help the public know better. For example, while they can tolerate unbalanced budgets, we hear serious, academic economists stand before a media inquisition and say about national debt:
"We know at some point too much is too much."
"We do not know how much is too much too much."
Such statements are as unclear as they are unfalsifiable. By comparison, those articulate, Wall-Street economists sound clear and confident. They give short answers that sound precise --even if, when spliced together, their daily pronouncements make neither sense nor science.

In search of sense,
in search of a science
I took my thoughts on a trip from economics
haphazardly
to the origins of life
and, still in search,
back again.

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:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 7. Science or Pseudoscience ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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