Howdy, I'm not so sure I understand what D. McCloskey's piece is saying. When he remarks that, "The result of reading 44 pages of hundreds of scientific results from the front line of applied economics was mainly that I believed surprisingly little of it," I am reminded about the old saying that new paradigms arise in science not because scientists become convinced, but because the advocates of the old paradigms grow old and die and are thus replaced by younger practitioners of another school of thought.
I recently spent some time looking up the principle of flight on the internet, and was suprised that what I thought was a well established fact, that the Venturi and Bernoulli effects are responsible for flight, is actually untrue, i.e. the effects cannot possibly generate the forces needed to lift a plane, and that planes fly because of the Coanda effect. And then I learned that the Coanda effect is in fact a fairy tale and flight arises from the combinations of the Venturi and Bernoulli effects! These assertions came from presumably credible sources! If this sort of controversy can exist regarding something so well established as flight, why would dis-"belief" and controversy be an indictment of econometrics? Surely such controversy is a far cry from claiming that econometrics is merely another astrology, which what the S.I. author seems to be claiming (in my opinion). Regarding something Fabio noted, if all we have are statistics without a priori rules, how do we know what is an empirical fact and what isn't? For the sake of argument, one could reject Fabio's use of Occam's Razor by noting that Lott's hypothesis explains more empirical "facts" than his critics' hypothesis, e.g. violent crime rates rise in counties that border states that pass concealed carry laws. But how do we know whether such a rise in crime rates is a "fact" or a "statistical fluke?" Does it all boil down to which celebrity one enjoys more: Rosie O'Donnel or Charleton Heston? Surely, there must be more to it than that, isn't there? Respectfully yours, jsh __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games http://sports.yahoo.com
