Math envy. It affects more than economics and often only obscures the intended meaning (if there’s any there in the first place) while giving the illusion of rigor because symbols...and “math”!
Indeed. One of the more infamous examples comes from the field of positive psychology [1]. A psychology researcher used fluid dynamics formulas to come up with ratios of positive to negative experiences that separate languishing from flourishing. And then one of those articles [2] got numerous citations in the literature, helping to establish the idea of this ratio and a whole little clade of research that took the validity of that ratio for granted. To be fair, one of the reasons for its infamy is that the Alan Sokal co-authored an article [3] that ruthlessly criticized the mathematical methods.
[1] This is a surprisingly hard term to really pin down. Loosely speaking, the idea is that we should be able to characterize the development of psychological strengths independently of any taxonomy of diseases or disorders. However, explanations of it often seamlessly bleed over into concepts more characteristic of virtue ethics, Stoicism, rugged individualism, and self-help. The more cynical part of me wants to dismiss it as the clinical psychology equivalent of vitalism, but perhaps that is just a pattern that characterizes its excesses.
>"The point of the paper is that if we want economics to be a science, we have to recognize that it is not ok for macroeconomists to hole up in separate camps, one that supports its version of the geocentric model of the solar system and another that supports the heliocentric model. As scientists, we have to hold ourselves to a standard that requires us to reach a consensus about which model is right, and then to move on to other questions."
I disagree with this. Convergence on one methodology, model or theory is usually achieved by some process of reductionism, but the complexity of economics makes it hard to ever come to some straight forward conclusion about which form of inquiry is superior, or if there even is such a thing.
Even physics is not safe from this. People have questioned the importance of string theory and its 'mathiness' and difficulty to be empirically verified. Some people believe in grand unified theories, others think they're not worth pursuing.
In general I think what ever helps clarifying issues we have or helps solve problems is worth keeping. I think we ought to science more as a form of discourse than as some sort of 'model' that needs to converge on anything. Mathiness has its place and so has non mathiness. Different models may work in different circumstances.
