Computers helped orthodox economists to feel that they were doing real science, because now they were able to number crunch an enormous amount of data.
But first class science gets things right, whereas neoclassical economics never did, for example, their theories of raise all boats, trickle down, and that privatised companies that would serve the public better.
Paul Krugman in neoclassical economics
Too much of it involved making assumptions about how unmeasurable things affected other unmeasurable things.
Beatrice Cherrier -
The idea that economics has recently gone through an empirical turn –that it went from theory to data– is all over the place. I argue that this transformation has been oversimplified and mischaracterized.
"In the 1940s and 1950s, the military and the Ford Foundation were the largest patrons. Both wanted applied research of the quantitative, formalized and interdisciplinary kind. Economists were however eager to secure distinct streams of money. They felt that being often looped together with other social sciences was a problem. Suspicion toward social sciences was as high among politicians – isn’t there a systematic affinity with socialism– as among natural scientists –social sciences can’t produce laws. "
Beatrice Cherrier - Is there really an empirical turn in economics?
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