The Logic Isn't There

Free exchange (via Economist's View) writes, in an entry called "The science isn't there:"

First of all, I know that we all consider economics a science, but as sub-fields go, macroeconomics is one of the least science-y. Among the reasons—too many variables, too small samples, no repeatable experiments, and so on. ...

Which is why it's important to have a good, qualitative model of the mechanisms involved to supplement the data analysis.

If I had been eating Corn Flakes, they would have been coming up my nose. Fortunately, not. So, after admitting there's no there for macroeconomics considered as a science, Free Exchange still thinks it's important to have a model. I don't think so. Models should help to make useful predictions; so models are relevant only in subjects which are scientific. Otherwise, they are simply a special type of crossword puzzle - perhaps useful for reflection, but irrelevant to the real world. Sure, economists like them, because they constitute a sort of private language which take time to learn and evaluate, and create a barrier-to-entry to non-economists. And so in a tawdry sense of "useful" - in the sense of keeping the riff-raff out - models may be useful in a non-scientific subject. But they don't improve our knowledge of the real world - because a subject which is not a science cannot.