Mathiness
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Mathiness is a term coined by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer to label a specific misuse of mathematics in economic analyses.[1] An author committed to the norms of science should use mathematical reasoning to clarify their analyses. By contrast, "mathiness" is not intended to clarify, but instead to mislead. According to Romer, some researchers use unrealistic assumptions and strained interpretations of their results in order to push an ideological agenda, and use a smokescreen of fancy mathematics to disguise their intentions.[2]
The first usage of the term was at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in January 2015. Afterwards Paul Romer published his article Mathiness in the Theory of Economic Growth in the American Economic Review.[3] The coinage mathiness follows the pattern of truthiness coined by comedian Stephen Colbert.[4] Romer warns that mathiness is distorting economics:[5]
Presenting a model is like doing a card trick. Everybody knows that there will be some sleight of hand. There is no intent to deceive because no one takes it seriously. Perhaps our norms will soon be like those in professional magic; it will be impolite, perhaps even an ethical breach, to reveal how someone’s trick works.
He specifically points to some work by Edward C. Prescott, Robert Lucas, Jr., and Ellen McGrattan, among others,[2] and argues for a return to scientific rigor:
Economists have a collective stake in flushing mathiness out into the open. We will make faster scientific progress if we can continue to rely on the clarity and precision that math brings to our shared vocabulary.
Long before Romer, Hayek had condemned scientism, specifically in the form of the misuse of mathematics in social science, in his 1974 Nobel Prize acceptance speech on "The Pretence of Knowledge",[6] and in his 1942 essay "Scientism and the Study of Society", later published as The Counter-Revolution of Science.