March 16, 2004

Duke economics. A great deal of academic economics today consists of pseudo-scientific statistical "prediction" and "testing", much of it the misuse of "significance testing" or the mistaking of correlation for causation -- and the rest at bottom no different than putting a ruler up against a trend and the claiming "scientific" status for the "model". I won't go into how and why this has nothing to do with science as it is done in the chemisty, physics or biology departments. Economics also does other types of fake physics but my point here is to direct your attention to how this "idiot savant" fakery (AEA description) is transforming the make-up of American economic faculties.

Here is the current breakdown of the affiliations of the Duke economics faculty:

5 Democrats
10 Republicans
13 non-American

The American Economics Association some decades back labeled new econ grads "idiot savants" because these folks were uniformally characterizable as math wizes with little or no understanding of the economy -- either in terms of the explanatory strategy of folks like Smith and Hayek, or in terms of the everyday facts and workings of the economy. They were, in other words "idiot savants", often 2nd rate math or physics majors looking for easy entry into academic careerism. I.e. folks without a deep scientific interest in making explanatory sense of the spontaneous order of the market. And a great many of these "math jock' types -- who excel at the pseudo-science math game -- happen to be grad students from Korea, India, Taiwan, etc. (thanks to Newmark's Door for the data). Posted by Greg Ransom | TrackBack