Granted, the merit of some of the awards is questionable, but I think e.g.: Nash's work on game theory or Kahneman/Tvservky's on the pyschology of judgment definitely fall under the umbrella of "science".
Turing wasn't nearly as well known as he is now. The cryptoanalysis of the Enigma remained classified until the early 1970s, long after the Turing award was established (the first award was given in 1966).
No, a newly named award shouldn't really have any existing clout associated with it, and can make it's own reputation. The Turing award is not treated like a nobel prize by pretty much anyone, though it is respected.
Economics decided that kind of thing, say a "Smith award" wouldn't get them enough clout, so better to abuse a brand name for it's value. How classic.
Very interesting examples. For Nash, Von Neumann contributions to the field were orders of magnitude more important. For Kahneman and Tversky let's not forget that the foundations are quite shaky to quote [0]
Falsifiability, controllability. Most hard sciences study and explain phenomena in an isolated and controlled system. You have well defined input parameters, some starting context, and you observe the output over time. You change your input and/or the context and you note the change in the output. Because the system is controlled and isolated, the experiment, if repeated by a different observer, should in theory give them the same results. From those observations, you can begin to infer what the plausible relationships are between the actors in your experiment and devise your hypotheses. Physics and chemistry for example leave little room to ambiguity. Biology because of factors like aging and mutation has to account for some variance.
But the further away we move from an isolated system and include increasingly unpredictable or difficult to account for inputs or context, the less we can claim to have predictable output. Some nutrition advices for example are questionable, because they aim to give simplistic recommendations based on isolated observations of a phenomenon, that must eventually work as part of a sophisticated synergistic system. Many disciplines currently considered (or disputed) to be science allege to map inputs to output in similarly complex systems. Economy must account for human behaviour, culture, environment, leadership, just to name a few volatile factors (plus a crystal ball for things like COVID-19, remote work, Russia vs Ukraine).
Einstein's models made a prediction, people 'tested' that prediction in Nature, and it turned out accurate. General theory has made other predictions, and empirical observations have found them to be accurate as well.
Plenty of "real" science is/was done outside of controlled experiments in a lab.
A phenomena was going to happen (e.g., tax law changes): some economic models predicted X would happen, and some predicted Y would. We can see which were more accurate and which were falsified:
Every time the Federal Reserve makes a policy change there are people running their models on what will happen, and if their models are right they make a lot of money, and if they're wrong they lose a lot of money:
> But why was Gross betting so heavily against Treasuries? Brad DeLong tries to rationalize[1] Gross’s behavior in terms of a coherent story about an impending U.S. recovery, which would lift us out of the liquidity trap. But Gross wasn’t saying anything like that. Instead, he was claiming that the Fed’s asset purchases — QE2 — were holding rates down, and warned that the impending spike in rates when QE2 ended would derail recovery.
> So why did he believe all that? It all comes down, I’d argue, to liquidity trap denial.
> Since 2008 the basic logic of the economic situation has been that the private sector is trying to run a huge surplus, and the public sector isn’t willing to run a corresponding deficit. The result is an economy awash in desired savings with nowhere to go. This in turn means that budget deficits aren’t competing with private borrowing, and therefore need not drive up interest rates. This isn’t hindsight; it’s what I and others have been saying since the very beginning[2].
If people don't want to bother accepting the results of these experiments and continue following models for reason other than accuracy, that's hardly the fault of the field of study. See the movie Behind the Curve on folks doing perfectly valid experiments and completely ignoring the results:
When you branch of from real sciences, defining a lower of bar of quality, unable to meet the standard of the established field.
Also if you branched off of social sciences some time ago and you never bothered to implement reproducibility reforms.
That's not to say all papers of such a science are garbage, just most will be, since not only is the bar for acceptance lower, those sciences also attract people who are unable to meet the standards of other fields.
Feels like everything other than theology is really just junk science, isn't it? After all, that is what universities were largely created for to start with.
Plenty of hypothesis are formed and experiments done in economics:
> The Kansas experiment refers to Kansas Senate Bill Substitute HB 2117, a bill signed into law in May 2012 by Kansas state Governor Sam Brownback, and its impact on Kansas.[1][2] It was one of the largest income tax cuts in the state's history.[3] The Kansas experiment has also been called the "Great Kansas Tax Cut Experiment",[4] the "Red-state experiment",[5] "the tax experiment in Kansas",[6] and "one of the cleanest experiments for how tax cuts affect economic growth in the U.S."[7] The cuts were based on model legislation published by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),[8][9][10][11] supported by supply-side economist Arthur Laffer,[12] and anti-tax leader Grover Norquist.[13] The law cut taxes by US$231 million in its first year, and cuts were projected to total US$934 million annually after six years,[14] by eliminating taxes on business income for the owners of almost 200,000 businesses and cutting individual income tax rates.[14]
> Brownback compared his tax policies with those of Ronald Reagan, and described them as "a real live experiment",[15] which would be a "shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy",[16] and predicted that by 2020 they would have created an additional 23,000 jobs.[3] By 2017, state revenues had fallen by hundreds of millions of dollars,[17] causing spending on roads, bridges, and education to be slashed.[18][19] With economic growth remaining consistently below average,[4] the Republican Legislature of Kansas voted to roll back the cuts; although Brownback vetoed the repeal, the legislature succeeded in overriding his veto.[20]
When the Fed first announced 'quantitative easing' in 2010, it was an experiment on the economy and a whole bunch of folks made predictions on what would happen:
> We believe the Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase plan (so-called "quantitative easing") should be reconsidered and discontinued. We do not believe such a plan is necessary or advisable under current circumstances. The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed's objective of promoting employment.
A bunch of others said the above was non-sense: one group's models were right, and the other groups' were wrong (the folks who wrote the letter).
Even true on Wall Street, where Gross of PIMCO famously predicted things would go a certainly way and put up a lot of money… and his predictions were wrong (as certain economists said they were):
> But why was Gross betting so heavily against Treasuries? Brad DeLong tries to rationalize[1] Gross’s behavior in terms of a coherent story about an impending U.S. recovery, which would lift us out of the liquidity trap. But Gross wasn’t saying anything like that. Instead, he was claiming that the Fed’s asset purchases — QE2 — were holding rates down, and warned that the impending spike in rates when QE2 ended would derail recovery.
> So why did he believe all that? It all comes down, I’d argue, to liquidity trap denial.
> Since 2008 the basic logic of the economic situation has been that the private sector is trying to run a huge surplus, and the public sector isn’t willing to run a corresponding deficit. The result is an economy awash in desired savings with nowhere to go. This in turn means that budget deficits aren’t competing with private borrowing, and therefore need not drive up interest rates. This isn’t hindsight; it’s what I and others have been saying since the very beginning[2].
Einstein's models made a prediction, people tested/measured that prediction, it turned out true/accurate. General theory has made other predictions, and empirical observations have found them to be accurate as well.
A phenomena was going to happen (e.g., tax law changes): some economic models predicted X would happen, and some predicted Y would. We can see which were more accurate.
Plenty of "real" science is/was done outside of controlled experiments.
