When I started this discussion about mathiness, I promised myself that I would publicly admit to any mistakes that I make. There is a post today at Information Transfer Economics that makes a good point: Romer should have left off the word empirical when he said: “Like mathematical theory, mathiness uses a mixture of words and symbols, but instead of making tight links, it leaves ample room for slippage between statements in natural versus formal language and between statements with theoretical as opposed to empirical content.

I have a rule about assigning blame: When a reader misunderstands, it is the writer’s fault. My paper and posts about mathiness have prompted some reactions that reflect a misunderstanding of my position. Here I’ll try to clarify what that position is. I’ll put off for later a response to people who understand (thank you!) but disagree. My position is hard to understand partly because it is unfamiliar. It is natural for a reader to think, “In criticizing mathiness, Romer has voiced a grievance that I/we have felt/articulated for years…” Or on the other side to think, “Romer has picked up that discredited argument that…”

I don’t think it takes much philosophical sophistication to understand the challenge we face in defending the norms of science against infection by the norms of politics. Mostly you just have to be specific. Take the report out this week about the paper that was just retracted from Science. According to Retraction Watch the political scientists who did the study claimed to find that “short conversations could change people’s minds on same-sex marriage.

You might think that my undergraduate degree is the kind of thing I’d remember. But if so, you’d be wrong. A colleague noticed that in my post about protecting the norms of science, I wrote that I had an undergraduate degree in physics, but my CV says (correctly) that my undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago is a B.S. in Math. I was a physics major for most of my time there, and physics was the focus of my coursework.

In a recent post, Simon Wren-Lewis suggests: i) that there is something wrong in economics, and ii) that the problem lies at a level that is deeper than individual models that are wrong. I agree with both assertions. To make point (ii), he writes, “the discussion needs to be about methodology, rather than individual models.” I suggest that we frame this look at the deeper level in a slightly different way–in terms of the norms of science, not in terms of methodology.