Links this week:

1. Gary Marcus takes on John Horgan over the achievements of science.
2. The medicalisation of normality.
3. On neuroeconomics – we need to understand the processes underlying decisions to get microeconomics right.
4. Andrew Gelman on statistical significance: “A serious researcher can easily get statistical significance when nothing is going on at all …. And this can happen without the researcher even trying, just from doing an analysis that seems reasonable for the data at hand…So, given all this, the focus on p=.04 or .06 or .10 seems to be beside the point. It’s worth looking at … but what it’s focusing on is the least of our problems.”
5. A piece by Robert Shiller where, among other things, he defends the use of mathematics in economics.
6. A few more pieces of criticising economics – Chris Dillow, Alex Marsh and Diane Coyle.

]]>