and economists (and sadly many climate scientists) are trying to do. The problem with economics has always been you cannot quantify human desires or mathematically model such a chaotic system. That holds true for climate science as well; too much fudge factor needed. It ends up being what the modeler decides and not what is necessarily happening.

This COVID business, for instance, was unforseen by any economists, who could not have predicted a major economic downturn . Vast sums of money were lost because of a life form that requires an electron microscope to see!

I liked this quote from Dr. Ionnidis:


Sound familiar? Yeah; they've been doing this in climate science for decades now.

Other notable quotables from the article:

Ioannidis cites groupthink among epidemiologists as a source of forecasting error. When a doomsday prediction is made — especially by celebrity scientists — the act of introducing a more mitigating prognosis may bring substantial risk to one’s career, and thus be suppressed. Alternately, the published or broadcast results of thought leaders may be a form of anchoring. As Ioannidis and his team write,

Models can be tuned to get desirable results and predictions, e.g. by changing the input of what are deemed to be the plausible values for key variables. This is true for models that depend upon theory and speculation, but even data-driven forecasting can do the same, depending upon how the modeling is performed. In the presence of strong groupthink and bandwagon effects, modelers may consciously fit their predictions to what the dominant thinking and expectations are – or they may be forced to do so.

The economics profession is certainly not immune to this. It manifests in several ways, one of which is mainstream economists’ unwillingness to admit their errors (as the continued use of flawed models or bad data attests to). Many economists instinctively do not criticize theory or practices within their institution or school of thought owing to political expediency. The highly ‘siloed’ nature of journals and conferences attests to it, as do the veritable echo chambers in social media. This is not merely a personal observation; it and its effects have been cited elsewhere. Here, in no less prominent a place as the International Monetary Fund:

Analytical weaknesses were at the core of some of the IMF’s most evident shortcomings in surveillance … [as a result of] … the tendency among homogeneous, cohesive groups to consider issues only within a certain paradigm and not challenge its basic premises.

This article is brilliant; read the whole thing!

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