If there was ever a more apt example of an oxymoron then describing economics as a science would likely be it?

Put 10 economists in the same room and you'll get 30 different opinions.

An Ivy league Study followed a group of economists for thirty years, as their reputations grew their accurate assessments declined in almost direct inverse proportion? Moreover the most popular theories, seem to avoid cause and effect as central to foreseeable and predictable outcomes.

Like the great depression and a later great recession, created by simply concentrating more and more of our finite wealth in fewer and fewer hands, which if it proves anything, proves nobody learns the lessons of history!

As for psychology, this is another area of contention that sees young graduates let loose on an unsuspecting population, and in too many cases, heads full of untested intellectual concepts much like this essay?

The Irish have an expression that goes, anyone who thinks they need a psychologist, ought to have their head examined!
Alan B.

Mumbo jumbo, monkey bones and witchcraft are the closest disciplines to economics.

Psychology has always been at the heart of economics, which basically tries to explain how people behave in order to get the things they want. Utility maximisation, revealed preference and demand for status goods are all fundamentally about human psychology.

Behavioural economics has made a valuable contribution because it has refined and enhanced our understanding of people's behaviour and objectives, for example asymmetry with regard to risk.

I agree, though, that, behavioural economics can cross the boundary between understanding what people want and telling them what they should want.

Alan B: The status of economics as a science is a big question, but there can be no doubt that the behavioral economists, and Vernon Smith and other experimental economists, have adopted a scientific approach to their work.
In my view the variety of views on some topics is evidence of a scientific approach. When there is only one view it could mean that the science is settled or it could mean that a single view is regarded as beyond question, like a religious doctrine.

The science is settled? YOU'RE JOKING? If economic theory had any merit worthy of an exact science? Boom and bust economies would be a thing of the past!

In any event, as long as cause and effect paradigms are overlooked or routinely ignored in favour of magic puddings and voodoo, the practice of much of so called financial Gurus?

Economics is the only branch of science that seriously expects to create something of value or worth from virtually nothing or the emperor's new clothes and cover that with a veritable dictionary of words and terminology (securitized derivatives) nobody but so called economists (or Mr ponzi) understand?
Alan B.

Free market force is like religion blaming god when events turn bad. Priests blame believers un-forgiven sins.

At the end of expansion periods, busts take investors money. Free market forces are blamed.

Like gullible people believing in sins need to be forgiven. Bad mentally stressful education prevents humans from doubting media lies blaming free market forces. Economists are little more than capitalist priests, portraying market movement propaganda.

http://psychforums.com/living-with-mental-illness/topic182473.html#p1893211

I constantly try to convince readers school education degrades real thinking intelligence. Few people care to want to believe education allowed them to be dumber than they feel they are. Feeling reasons they because they defeated classmates in tests, they are ever so intelligent.