Am I unfair to economists/economics?

[Mayabird]

It occurred to me that I might be a bit hypocritical when referring to economics as voodoo (not to be mistaken with vodoun, the religion) and economists as a bunch of idiots (among other things, usually more offensive) when I get angry at idiot creationists who don't know anything about biology but claim that they know evolution is a bunch of crap. I've only taken a couple very basic courses in econ which I thought were a bunch of crap and read a few books on theory, which is probably more than your typical creationist studies on evolution, but really it means I don't know what an expert is supposed to know.

But at the same time, evolution is very practical, applicable, and predictive (for instance, in making flu shots for the next year before new strains mutate), and economics...for all I know there are legitimate economists out there who know what's going on and predicted this entire scenario we're going through now, but nobody listened to them. And also a lot of supposedly intelligent economists helped get us into this mess in the first place. For something that's supposedly scientific, it doesn't seem to be very predictive or falsifiable at all since human belief and ideology becomes such a big part of it.

So yeah, unfair or not?

[LadyTevar]

No. It is voodoo, or any other kind of mysticism you want to describe it as. They throw the runes, open the entrails, bleed the chicken... and they have no better accuracy than the evening weatherman.

[The Minx]

I'll have to disagree with Lady Tevar here. Economics, like meteorology, is a science that is testable, quantitative and has been confirmed on a range of points. Though it is hardly a precision science, it is still science. Moreover, its hypotheses have been tested by simulation repeatedly and strides are being made connecting it to game theory, etc.

BTW, while the weatherman and economists cannot predict precisely the weather/economic changes that take place and cannot predict sudden calamities, they can make generalized predictions about long term trends (in that case, the weatherman is known as a "climatologist").

Voodoo is pure superstition based on nothing at all.

[Cynical Cat]

The really unfortunate thing about economics is that the profession is as policed as voodoo. Thus you Randroid economists and supply siders spouting off on national tv authoritatively about theories that don't work well in the real world, but have allowed some people to make a fuck load of money while most of a country crashes (i.e. Chili). How are these guys punished for pimping economic theories that all existing evidence says are shit and claiming the New Deal was the worst disaster in American history? They're made the head of the Treasury department.