Re: poly: Modeling Economic Singularities

Perry rants:
>No one publishes theoretical models with as little backing as the soft
>"sciences". I use "science" in quotes, as from what I can tell, social
>"science" does not follow the conventional methods of science. ...
>I'm suggesting that you
>and many of your colleagues produce reams of speculation, rarely if
>ever test it, produce lovely papers based on towers of speculation,
>and happily continue on, behaving as though you had no obligation to
>even so much as label your speculations as speculations and not as
>demonstrated theory.

The American Economic Review is the most respected economic journal.
Perry, I challenge you to take the most recent issue of the AER, read
one of the articles in detail, and then tell us what is wrong with it
and how you would better study the questions they were interested in.
In particular, you might describe how exactly the methods used are
inferior to those in articles in the most recent issue of Physics Review
and the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
Received on Tue May 5 18:48:47 1998