A_Raybould

A_Raybould

1p

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14 years ago @ Information Technology... - In Defense of Rigor (P... · 0 replies · +1 points

I'm a couple of years late in replying, but there's been no discernible progress over that time! There has, however, been an event that should make it plain, to those who are interested in looking, that this matters: the financial crisis. Between the abuse of value-at-risk models, often by people who didn't understand them, and the corruption of information resulting from the ratings agencies selling out, there's plenty of evidence that lack of rigor hurts.

Your article puts me in mind of Richard Feynman's fairly well-known talk on the nature of scientific inquiry, in which he compared pseudo-sciences to Polynesian cargo cults. In my opinion, economics has been perilously close to the latter, though I do believe it is getting better.