ŏ Ŕ ō Ŝ Š ő Ş ȘȚTacit Preachments are
the Worst Kind*
ŜŞőōŏŔŕŚœ ōŚŐ ŏśšŚŠőŞřőŠŔśŐśŘśœť
Some years ago I gave a talk on “Ļe Curse of Methodology.” Ļat unfor-
tunate title appeared to deny that methodology comes in good varieties
as well as bad. Still, good methodology is mostly countermethodology,
which strives to free working economists from methodological pressures.
Ļe worst preachments, which were and remain my main target, are
the pervasive, tacit, dimly identified kind. Countermethodology can drag
them into the open, exposing them to inspection and, when appropriate,
to ridicule. As if to ward off this exposure, however, the practitioners of
tacit methodology appear to taboo explicit method-talk.Ȁ
I offer this and other remarks about the state of academic economics
not as confident assertions but as conjectures and as possible explanations
of what we do observe. We have an opportunity to confess our suspicions
and to compare and check them out. I quote and paraphrase scholars
whose writings document my points or who share my perceptions and
I also use footnotes all more extensively than precepts of good writing
style might otherwise recommend. Invoking respectable company itself
proves nothing, but it assuages my uneasiness.
In part, admittedly, I’ll be expressing personal pique. Even some expe-
riences with explicit methodologizing prod me. Ļey include all too many
“Austrian” seminars at two or three universities in which discussion rou-
tinely degenerated from the substantive to the methodological. I have seen
dissertation-writers (at the University of Virginia) badgered about what
their models might be or what hypotheses they were testing (and have
*FromJournal of Economic Methodologyȁ, no.Ȁ( JuneȀȈȈȄ):Ȁ–ȂȂ.
Ȁ“[M]ethod-talk is asserted to be taboo in economics, when in fact it is surpassed in
its ubiquity only by discussion of other people’s salaries” (MirowskiȀȈȈȁ, p.ȁȂȅ).ȁȁȄ