Roger Pielke, Jr. writes:
Brad DeLong emailed me with a verbatim version of comments entered on my post about his attack-by-proxy on me by someone named “brad”. I had assumed that “brad” was not Professor Brad DeLong because “brad”’s comments were so sophmoric and inane, but apparently they are one and the same person.
(…)
A comment shows up:
Roger, I find Climatology and Economics to be similar in their personality quirks (a kind description.) Both are replete with huge egomaniacal leaders who cultivate a cult following. Many of the leaders in each field are more about politics than their ?science?.
My response to the comment:
That’s true, unfortunately. The problem stems from common features of both fields: lack of truly controlled experiments, tinkering with complex systems that cannot be put under laboratory examination, close ties to politics and policy making, strong mixture of ideology and facts.
Contrary to physics or mathematics (which I learn to respect more and more), in economics you can draw completely opposite normative conclusions from the very same paper. This is the reason why I hate the distinction between positive and normative economics. I would prefer to call them just “economics” and “politics”.
