"The Most Scientific of the Social Sciences"?

"What is the basis of this collective faith, shared by universities, presidents and billionaires? Shouldn't successful and powerful people be the first to spot the exaggerated worth of a discipline, and the least likely to pay for it?

"In the hypothetical worlds of rational markets, where much of economic theory is set, perhaps. But real-world history tells a different story, of mathematical models masquerading as science and a public eager to buy them, mistaking elegant equations for empirical accuracy."

 

Alan Jay Levinovitz in Aeon argues that economists "confuse math with science."

"For the Apollo 11 Conspiracy to Be True, How Many People Would Need to Be Part of the Secret?"

"Just over 400,000, says Oxford University physicist and cancer biologist David Robert Grimes. Grimes, who is also a journalist, has published a new mathematical equation in the journal PLOS ONE that estimates how long a large-scale conspiracy can last before someone behind the scenes intentionally or unintentionally pulls back the curtain."

Joshua Barajas at PBS Newshour writes about the probabilities of accurate conspiracy theories.