Nobody Believes Friedman (1953) - Interesting 5 min read on Friedman's "The Methodology of Positive Economics"

I usually disagree with this medium author because he likes to flirt with Marxist economics and frequently bashes neoliberalism, but the problem he identifies here is actually one I think is widespread in economics. Economists will devise theories that include unrealistic assumptions, but then defend the theory after finding it is empirically supported. They will then turn around and attack theories belonging to different economic paradigms for having unrealistic assumptions even if that theory is empirically supported.

I think this divide is due to a broader phenomena that economists don't like to talk about, that two competing and even mutually exclusive theories can both turn out to both be empirically supported. This phenomena is actually incredibly prevalent in the social sciences and is what I believe prevents them from being true sciences like physics and chemistry. It seems like I frequently see empirical studies done in social sciences where the experimental design is set up to find whatever conclusion the researcher wanted.

In my opinion, economists shouldn't be seeking to put economics on the same level as the natural sciences, rather they should be looking for the sweet spot between heuristics and empiricism.