Economists have faced a deluge of negative press in the past few years, ranging from criticisms over the failure to forecast the financial crisis, to the more recent disbelief over the granting of the Nobel Prize in Economics to three economists, two of whom hold views that can be said to be polar opposites. Indeed, the reputation of mainstream economics—specifically macroeconomics—is arguably at its worst since the formation of the field in the 1930s, with the advent of the Great Depression. This state of affairs prompted Raj Chetty, a professor of economics at Harvard, to author a defense of the field in ‘The New York Times,’ titled “Yes, Economics Is a Science.”

It seems as though economics is fighting for its right to stay in the exclusive group of fields deemed worthy enough to be called “science,” where subjects such as physics, chemistry, and molecular biology reside comfortably. Some instead opt to call economics, along with psychology and sociology, a “social science”—a vague term, often blurred with humanities, which is neither here nor there. Nevertheless, the underlying implication behind this battle is that to be a “science” is to be credible.

I don’t agree.

First and foremost, I don’t agree at all that economics is a science. Let me preface this by saying that I am concentrating in economics, and have the utmost respect for the field. Let me also clarify that when I say “economics” throughout this article, I primarily mean macroeconomics—microeconomics is an entirely different beast. While the two are intrinsically related, the methods of experimentation are so drastically different that the two can hardly be subject to the same criticisms.

Merriam-Webster’s definition of science is “a study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation.” What physics and chemistry and molecular biology have in common is that the building blocks of what they observe and experiment with don’t change. Such is the natural world. But what is the building block of economics? People. Economics does not study any unit smaller than a collection of people. And human behavior can never be absolutely predicted or explained—not if we wish to believe in free will, at any rate.

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