reply on: MONEY CLASS OF THE DAY: Christmas Gifts Are Inefficient \ stacker news ~econ

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*Behavioral psychology + a real theoretical framework + rigorous empirical techniques

There's a reason the Replication Crisis was so much worse in psychology than in economics:

Economists throw spaghetti at the wall and see what stuck. Sure they do it more than once and write about the one they liked more.
Psychologists throw spaghetti at the wall and pretend it supports what they wanted to say in the first place. Sometimes they just pretend that they threw the spaghetti.

It goes differently if you use logic and a priori premises. It is not quite the same as spaghetti on the wall (Keynesianism).

I’m describing what economists actually do, not what they should do.

LOL! Ok, that I can understand. You never know which way to take these things. :)

I didn’t tell my joke correctly

I was making fun of behavioral economics by Thaler

Ariely makes some interesting points

Wasn't Ariely one of Francesca Geno's coauthors on one of her fraudulent studies? I wonder if he made a statement.

For some reason I never trusted Ariely, he seems like a smooth talker. I admit that my suspicions are entirely aesthetic

The softer the social science, the more likely it is to be hokum.

Oh, sorry. I thought they were all hokum and magic.

Nice call on Ariely and Gino

I think your instincts about Ariely are correct

I'm trying to make fun of both, but psychology is much worse, despite how bad econ can be.

I think it depends on which school of economics you are thinking of and of which brand of psychology you are thinking of.

I guess you can inject nuance into the discussion. This is the internet, though, so tread lightly.

If you put nuance in, most people, including me, miss it because we are so used to being beaten over the head with hammers not plushy dolls.