this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 43 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Economics is a funny one as ultimately it's a focused & technical strand of anthropology (which I believe is considered a science by many) that people often incorrectly lump in with maths.

Kinda tough for an academic to run meaningful experiments on an actual economy though beyond models and simulation. And as anyone who has watched a Gary Stevenson video or two will know, your average academic economist is pretty bad at models and simulations.

Though I guess even bad experiments are still experiments

Edit: typo

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 17 hours ago

Kinda tough for an academic to run meaningful experiments

The actual foundation of economics.

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 32 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Most of them are pretty bad at anthro too tbh lol

If they were good at stuff they wouldn't be economists

Source: I'm an economist

[–] loonsun@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 day ago

Gary Stevenson is also an overconfident blow hard who thinks because he made money on the stock market he knows more than everyone. I'm a psychologist not an economist, I don't like economics, but this is all still wildly off base from what actually happens in academia. Economist don't run randomized control trial (RCT) style experiments. They use completely different techniques with different statistical methods to test assumptions. Are these as high quality for causal reasoning as a RCT study? No absolutely not. However I think the average person would be shocked at how much of every field of science does not confirm their studies to that gold standard and how difficult it is to match that exact specific scenario statistically.

This is an interesting perspective. I feel like I disagree with you, but I don't know why. Whenever I feel like this, it usually means that there is some interesting learning ahead of me if I am willing to chew on some ideas for a while, so thanks for writing this comment

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

it’s a focused & technical strand of anthropology (which I believe is considered a science by many)

...

Anthropology, as in what cultural arts are like in different groups of humanity? How is that a science? I even wanted to go into this field

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 3 points 1 day ago

Of course it is! We’re just animals, after all. Is documenting the behavior of different species of beetles a science? The only difference is that we can replicate behavior through culture, not just genes.