This meme is like having a PsychD diagnosing the heart attack victim with an Oedipus complex. It’s supposed to be an exaggerated jab at economics as a science but even under the irony betrays zero knowledge of real economics. It is a science, but it makes you feel better if you can pretend it’s all a sham in the same way every other pathetic anti-science dipshit does. But don’t take my word for it; take the word of this PLoS One article exploring excessive positive results in science papers:
these results support the scientific status of the social sciences [such as psychology, sociology, economics] against claims that they are completely subjective, by showing that, when they adopt a scientific approach to discovery, they differ from the natural sciences only by a matter of degree.
Ehh, that feels like a stretch. This is a valid, if potentially outdated critique that is commonly acknowledged in the field. I could see my old Econ professor hanging this meme outside her office.
Of course I wouldn’t be making this comment if this were just a harmless, trite Homo economicus joke without the subtitle Economic "science". But just like making a joke about recapitulation theory, the second you make that joke and add Evolution "science" after it, you’ve gone from a lighthearted jab into science denial backed by a puddle-deep understanding of the field.
In college I participated in an economic experiment where everyone in the class had a laptop, and we went through trials with different variations of “keep $2 or give everyone else $1”. The payout was $20 to whoever had the highest total at the end, everyone else got nothing. I kept the money every time until the end and won.
Afterwards the Economics professor called me to the front and started in with “See, this person proves that people act in their own self interest.” and I had to say “Well if you actually gave them the money when I picked ‘donate’, like the original experiment called for, I would have done that.” The professor and his assistant were not happy.
The title of the post aside, I think the meme itself touches on something real in some people. Although I do think economics is an actual science, unlike some of the people in the comments comparing it to homeopathy or scientology.
Tbf most “economists” you might run into are online. And they often still subscribe to schools of thought that the discipline has left behind. They hold on to them for political reasons making them the antivax/flat earth of economics of sorts
Economists are also mostly employed to serve the interests of the rich. They are a primary source of the useless metrics we hear on the news that truly reflect only the experience and interest of those who have enough money to respond to that info.
There are many other methods developed by non-shill economists that we never hear about unless one goes digging into more obscure academic literature.
The Gini coefficient is one example. It is a perfectly valid way of framing and interpreting economic data, but one almost never sees it in popular media. Why?
The people that buy economists and media don’t even want to have the conversation about income inequality.
So, yes, economics is a valid area of study that has some valid methods.
Also, most economists are intellectually dishonest and compromised shills for entrenched wealth.
I’d happily see the Œdipus complex meme. Psychologists deserve to be endlessly clowned on as long as Freudian theory keeps getting taught and practiced by licensed professionals instead of being relegated to the history of the sciences alongside bloodletting and humors theory.
Academic fields are collectively responsible for these actively harmful ideas (psychoanalysis and homo economicus) being continuously propagated by ill-intentioned or incompetent academics. I don’t care that these theories are now “widely considered outdated” or whatever the fuck, proponents of this quackery are actively giving interviews and teaching classes and no-one in their field is seriously considering stripping them of their credentials. That’s more than enough justification for the mockery.
I feel like this is incredibly misleading to clip out of the abstract when just above it we have:
If the hierarchy hypothesis is correct, then researchers in “softer” sciences should have fewer constraints to their conscious and unconscious biases, and therefore report more positive outcomes. Results confirmed the predictions at all levels considered: discipline, domain and methodology broadly defined. Controlling for observed differences between pure and applied disciplines, and between papers testing one or several hypotheses, the odds of reporting a positive result were around 5 times higher among papers in the disciplines of Psychology and Psychiatry and Economics and Business compared to Space Science, 2.3 times higher in the domain of social sciences compared to the physical sciences, and 3.4 times higher in studies applying behavioural and social methodologies on people compared to physical and chemical studies on non-biological material. In all comparisons, biological studies had intermediate values. These results suggest that the nature of hypotheses tested and the logical and methodological rigour employed to test them vary systematically across disciplines and fields, depending on the complexity of the subject matter and possibly other factors (e.g., a field’s level of historical and/or intellectual development). On the other hand,
To clip the quote just after the statement “on the other hand” to give the definitive conclusion of the paper is pretty wack. Like the paper is literally titled “Positive” Results Increase Down the Hierarchy of the Sciences
Further I think this meme isn’t about the fact that it’s literally impossible to do economics, or that there is nothing worth studying in markets. More that the orthodoxy and biases of economics muddy the field to the point of dishonesty, shown here as being 5 times more likely to be right when you can massage the factors compared to telescope data.
Yes, it’s very disingenuous to take the quote the abstract concludes on which plainly supports the social sciences as true scientific fields, contrary to what the OP implies through scare quotes.
By the way, here’s the full chart since you’re so worried about taking things “out of context”:
I guess economics is just a more robust field of science than biochem, pharmacology, clinical medicine, materials science, and psych, because that’s totally what the data means. I am very smart™.
You’re bring a lot of energy that suggest to me this is a particular bone you have to pick. I agree econ can be a science. Sadly this meme doesn’t dive into the sociological foundations that validate the possibility of a hypothetical world where econ is done properly and can become a science along side other social sciences; choosing instead to just critique the absurdity of economics as it is currently exists.
I guess economics is just a more robust field of science than biochem, pharmacology, clinical medicine, materials science, and psych, because that’s totally what the data means.
I think there are other issues with the paper that make me hesitant to take it’s conclusions at face value.
This meme is like having a PsychD diagnosing the heart attack victim with an Oedipus complex. It’s supposed to be an exaggerated jab at economics as a science but even under the irony betrays zero knowledge of real economics. It is a science, but it makes you feel better if you can pretend it’s all a sham in the same way every other pathetic anti-science dipshit does. But don’t take my word for it; take the word of this PLoS One article exploring excessive positive results in science papers:
Cope harder. —A leftist
Ehh, that feels like a stretch. This is a valid, if potentially outdated critique that is commonly acknowledged in the field. I could see my old Econ professor hanging this meme outside her office.
Of course I wouldn’t be making this comment if this were just a harmless, trite Homo economicus joke without the subtitle
Economic "science". But just like making a joke about recapitulation theory, the second you make that joke and addEvolution "science"after it, you’ve gone from a lighthearted jab into science denial backed by a puddle-deep understanding of the field.deleted by creator
In college I participated in an economic experiment where everyone in the class had a laptop, and we went through trials with different variations of “keep $2 or give everyone else $1”. The payout was $20 to whoever had the highest total at the end, everyone else got nothing. I kept the money every time until the end and won.
Afterwards the Economics professor called me to the front and started in with “See, this person proves that people act in their own self interest.” and I had to say “Well if you actually gave them the money when I picked ‘donate’, like the original experiment called for, I would have done that.” The professor and his assistant were not happy.
The title of the post aside, I think the meme itself touches on something real in some people. Although I do think economics is an actual science, unlike some of the people in the comments comparing it to homeopathy or scientology.
Tbf most “economists” you might run into are online. And they often still subscribe to schools of thought that the discipline has left behind. They hold on to them for political reasons making them the antivax/flat earth of economics of sorts
Economics is absolutely a valid field of study.
Economists are also mostly employed to serve the interests of the rich. They are a primary source of the useless metrics we hear on the news that truly reflect only the experience and interest of those who have enough money to respond to that info.
There are many other methods developed by non-shill economists that we never hear about unless one goes digging into more obscure academic literature.
The Gini coefficient is one example. It is a perfectly valid way of framing and interpreting economic data, but one almost never sees it in popular media. Why?
The people that buy economists and media don’t even want to have the conversation about income inequality.
So, yes, economics is a valid area of study that has some valid methods.
Also, most economists are intellectually dishonest and compromised shills for entrenched wealth.
Two things can be true at the same time.
Yeah, a system can be extensively studied and understood even if it’s a bad system.
I’d happily see the Œdipus complex meme. Psychologists deserve to be endlessly clowned on as long as Freudian theory keeps getting taught and practiced by licensed professionals instead of being relegated to the history of the sciences alongside bloodletting and humors theory.
Academic fields are collectively responsible for these actively harmful ideas (psychoanalysis and homo economicus) being continuously propagated by ill-intentioned or incompetent academics. I don’t care that these theories are now “widely considered outdated” or whatever the fuck, proponents of this quackery are actively giving interviews and teaching classes and no-one in their field is seriously considering stripping them of their credentials. That’s more than enough justification for the mockery.
I feel like this is incredibly misleading to clip out of the abstract when just above it we have:
To clip the quote just after the statement “on the other hand” to give the definitive conclusion of the paper is pretty wack. Like the paper is literally titled “Positive” Results Increase Down the Hierarchy of the Sciences
Further I think this meme isn’t about the fact that it’s literally impossible to do economics, or that there is nothing worth studying in markets. More that the orthodoxy and biases of economics muddy the field to the point of dishonesty, shown here as being 5 times more likely to be right when you can massage the factors compared to telescope data.
Yes, it’s very disingenuous to take the quote the abstract concludes on which plainly supports the social sciences as true scientific fields, contrary to what the OP implies through scare quotes.
By the way, here’s the full chart since you’re so worried about taking things “out of context”:
I guess economics is just a more robust field of science than biochem, pharmacology, clinical medicine, materials science, and psych, because that’s totally what the data means. I am very smart™.
You’re bring a lot of energy that suggest to me this is a particular bone you have to pick. I agree econ can be a science. Sadly this meme doesn’t dive into the sociological foundations that validate the possibility of a hypothetical world where econ is done properly and can become a science along side other social sciences; choosing instead to just critique the absurdity of economics as it is currently exists.
I think there are other issues with the paper that make me hesitant to take it’s conclusions at face value.