October 3, 2016

When proto-scientific Heterodoxy calls Orthodoxy pseudo-scientific

Comment on Editor on ‘The economics profession is under profound pressure (Financial Times)’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

In 2012 students of the Post-Crash Economics Society asked the right questions: “... students across the world are questioning the very foundations of our discipline” and “How far can economics be called a real science?” (See intro)

In 2015 “students complain that, as things stand, they continue to be indoctrinated in the methodology of a pseudoscience built on the so-called neoclassical framework.”

The problem with the Post-Crash Economics Society and Heterodoxy, in general, is that they did not manage to get above the pseudo-scientific level since 2012.#1 Worse, orthodox economics is scientific garbage for not less than 140 years. Why is it still around?

“... we may say that the long-lasting success ... of a certain point of view is not a sign of excellence or an indication that the truth or part of the truth has at last been found. It is, rather, the indication of a failure of reason to find suitable alternatives which might be used to transcend an accidental intermediate stage of our knowledge.” (Feyerabend, 2004)

So, the explanation for the provable fact that economics is what Feynman famously called a cargo cult science is the scientific incompetence of economists.#2

“In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum, 1991)

Economists have no true theory. Economics is a failed science. What economists have to offer is political opinion without a sound scientific foundation. This applies to Orthodoxy AND Heterodoxy, more specifically, to Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism.

It is common knowledge, the very foundations of economics are false, more specifically, axiomatically false. Axiomatically false means that the theory is BEYOND repair and has to be fully REPLACED. The replacement of the axiomatic foundations is what methodologists call a Paradigm Shift.#3 This is the very task of a constructive Heterodoxy. The only remaining alternative for both Orthodoxy and traditional Heterodoxy is to leave science.#4

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Heterodoxy’s scientific self-deception
#2 The general theory of scientific incompetence and All models are false because all economists are stupid
#3 From Orthodoxy to Heterodoxy to Sysdoxy
#4 The real problem with the economics Nobel