Well, I'd say you can rather fool people into believing that because they don't understand that you were actually proving something completely different.

But that's why checks and balances are so important in science (like everywhere). When we publish something, it'll have to go through a peer-review process, ie. a paper will be reviewed by a group of selected referees. Whilst for e.g. empirical papers that cannot imply an actual check of the estimations, it implies a plausibility check. But once a paper is published, it is open to scientific debate. And believe me, there's a lot of it. Often it involves actual replications of the empirical estimation to verify or falsify results. And often, wrong results are actually getting detected and dismissed that way. A famous example was Reinhart/ Rogoff (2010), a paper arguing for an unsustainability threshold of the debt-to-GDP ratio of an economy, which was dismissed as it couldn't be replicated. Long story short: Economics isn't a perfect science and we can't predict everything and sometimes we're wrong (so are engineers, medical scientists and physicists BTW) but at least in academia there are rigorous quality checks. The problem is only that those making political or business decisions are too often ignoring the academic debate, because it is slow and often doesn't deliver directly applicable results. That this fundamental research is yet useful, unfortunately not too many people appreciate.


They actually are fairly consistent, but obviously vary across the different samples used. The message stays the same: Young, urban, left-wing and more highly educated people are more likely to vote remain. That's not really too surprising, given that the out campaign is mainly driven by an anti-establishment sentiment. But I will have to add that the poll of polls might be a bit outdated: it's from last year. But generally the main result didn't change too much. That is: There tends to be a marginal lead for the in campaign, but it is likely to be within statistical errors. So it probably won't tell us much.

On a more general point on survey data, as empiricists tend to say: "Never trust survey data". It tends to be very biased as subtle changes in wording can have big impacts and also suffers from bias as what people say tends to differ from what they vote for. One can correct for some of the biases but there are obviously limits: If my data is a bit rubbish, I won't get great results. That's why I think there's a point in the criticism of these polls, and particularly the polls being over-quoted. I accept they are the only measure of public opinion we have, but I don't see how having another marginal poll published every other day should enhance anything.

Apologies for another lengthy post and remember

Goodnight!

In the case of the current encumbents of:
A. The Bank of England
B. The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer
They each have 100% records of being wrong in their public pronouncements.
Of course, these are two of the main participants in the great debate who continue to claim divine insight up to 15 years ahead.

Your social science has yet to earn it's spurs and anyone in another profession who was consistently wrong all of the time could hardly expect to keep their job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science

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Dave

It's not that economists are always wrong. Now, the ones in the media really tend to be...

1) Politicians: They are more concerned with looking nice to the people in the present rather than being right. For a politician it's far more important to be liked by the people than being right so they say what they perceive as the public's wishes when they speak. When the realization that they were wrong comes, many water already passed under the bridge and they can spin it in multiple ways.

2) Academics: Those who have always lived and worked in the pure academic environment and have no experience in the real world, those who have never worked in positions where their income depends on their accuracy, also tend to be wrong. Reality is far more complex than the sterile academic conditions are able to replicate.

Then you have several others, regretfully very rarely seen in the media anywhere, who work in positions where their expert opinions are important and people's money along with their own depends on what they say, write and do. These are worth listening. Also the ones who have an impressive resumé of earnings due to their efforts, mostly in the financial markets, are worth listening. Consistently earning money in the financial markets throughout a period of several years is the ultimate test about one's understanding of the economy for the way markets move is the sum of all forces acting upon it. Only those who truly understand them can earn money consistently and, therefore, understand the economy and have the ability to look forward to the future.

It's not that economy is like astrology. Far from that. One just must look for the answers in the right places instead of feeding on what those either with an agenda or inexperienced in real world conditions (or both!) say, not in order to enlighten the public but to promote their interests. Don't expect accurate previsions to the third decimal point. Economy is not engineering. From those who indeed know what they are doing, you can expect, however, a very high degree of accuracy and also the presentation of different possibilities according to this or that scenarios occurring in the future. Also these tend to be much less dogmatic than the former.

Quite so.

Such words as economics and engineering are easily conflated by those who wish to claim, or just imply, that they have some special insight or even powers to foresee the future in what are complex human relationships.
Only the Good Lord Harry knows why we put them into positions of influence and power.

In other instances, "businesses" are referred to as "industries" as if to imply that there is some form of value added to the real economy rather than dealing in the system of shadow banking and financialisation; the latter being part of the globalisation taking place at present, in my view - all being discussed over in "the other thread" so I will desist for now.

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Dave

Such as Peter Hargreaves, for example.
http://citywire.co.uk/money/peter-ha...mpaign/a907486

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Dave