Noah Smith (who tweets as @Noahopinion) made this tweet this morning, in response to the latest “Sokal hoax”, in which academics submit a nonsense paper to a journal which then publishes it:
5/The reason I know this is because of econ.
If you wanted to “prove” that econ was bullshit, you wouldn’t even have to Sokal hoax any journal. You could just pull real examples from the literature.
There are some BAAAD papers out there.
But are most econ papers bad? No.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) 4 October 2018
Cameron Murray observed in response that he often felt he was reading a Sokal hoax when he read economics textbooks:
Unfortunately, sometimes I read an economics textbook and wonder if it’s a Sokal hoax!@rethinkecon @UnlearningEcon https://t.co/QsPgcTCLA8
— Cameron Murray (@DrCameronMurray) 4 October 2018
That set off a brainwave for me. Textbooks are in fact the places that “Sokal Hoax” calibre nonsense in mainstream papers get sanitized sufficiently to hide the nonsense. These nonsense papers make assumptions or “logical” steps that any sane non-economist would think must be part of a hoax. And yet they go on to dramatically influence the profession. So I suggested that we institute a “Nobble Prize in Economics” to recognise–or rather expose–these papers:
Now that’s a good question: what’s your favorite actual, influential economics paper, that any non-economist would think was a Sokal hoax? @rethinkecon @UnlearningEcon @PostCrashEcon @Renegade_Inc
We can award it The Nobble Prize In Economics! https://t.co/IeG5uR6TAI pic.twitter.com/kwSCtp9IXe— Steve Keen (@ProfSteveKeen) 4 October 2018
This is actually a serious issue, and maybe a way to break the veneer of science that still protects mainstream economics to this day. So when I have time (now there’s a nonsense assumption at present!) I’ll see if I can institute and get funded a Nobble Prize in Economics, to assemble a list of all the absurd papers that have made economics into what it is today.
There’s tons. Cause is economists wanted particular results, but mathematical logic or empirical data denied it to them. So they make bonking mad assumptions to sidestep the problem, and the discipline swallows them whole because it wants those results. #NobblePrizeInEconomics
— Steve Keen (@ProfSteveKeen) 4 October 2018
The funding, of course, wouldn’t go to the original authors. I’m open to ideas as to how they might be employed.