For the last seven or eight years our watchword has been something akin to this idea from 2013's "The Next Time Someone Tells You Economics is a Science Remind Them of Mendeleev":
...Two other points to consider:1) The mere fact that economists use the tools of science (Maths) to do their work no more makes economics a science than bid and ask spreads make carbon trading "market based"....This is a subject I've been known to lose it over-see link below-but for now I'll just say if someone can't reproduce your results, what you did wasn't science. It might be religion, or some other belief system but no replication, no science.
Sorry.
Thanks for playing though.
(was that snarky enough? I could turn up the snark if that would help, it goes to eleven. I'm new to this nasty stuff, it's not really my style and frankly I'm not very good at it)
Via Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture:
Is Economics Research Replicable? “Usually Not”
Previously in Rantville:
August 2014
"Most Financial Economics Research is ‘Likely False’"
Reproducibility is pretty much the cornerstone of science. And yet some Bozo can come out and say:
People on all sides of the recent push for direct replication—a push I find both charming and naive—are angry....and keep his pathetic little job. As the young people used to phrase the rejoinder: L
By the way, that was James Coan, who calls himself "Dr." although he apparently didn't have the intellectual horsepower to become a Chiropractor or D.D.S., writing in the Journal Medium.
Rather than the two honorable professions named above he's a freakin' Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Virginia.
Jefferson weeps.
See, the thing is, if what one is writing about can't be reproduced, that kind of writing is called 'Literature'.
And, although gentle reader probably doesn't care, yes, I know the difference between replication and reproducibility.
With that note on the current state of the so-called soft sciences here's Barron's Focus on Funds with a much more upbeat post:
You might have heard of the study “Why Most Published Research Findings are False.” But who knew Ph.D.s had this much righteous indignation?......By-the-bye, should Coan decide against the rigor of writing for Medium or appearing on CBS' Sunday Morning there is always The Journal of Irreproducible Results.
HT on Coan, the invaluable Retraction Watch.
