Reading the replies you're getting, it seems the average HN commenter:
A. Has never read an economics research paper
B. Only know economics as monetary policy (or macro more broadly), and as a libertarian is inherently skeptical.
Currently, most of the interesting research being done in econ is outside of theoretical macro, so the knee jerk libertarian "economics is broken" meme doesn't hold much water as the topics and methods are pretty dissimilar. A developmental microeconomics field study in rural India is a different beast entirely from a macro theory paper.
For a sample of the diversity of economics research, see here: http://www.nber.org/papersbyprog/
Returning to your comment, the issue of storytelling, in a nutshell, was what drove me crazy when working closely with qualitative sociologists. Trying to discuss falsifiability in their study design was maddening. Sociology doesn't need to adopt the same research model as applied economics but they do need a serious look at their research methods, and I have more respect for those who try to take a quantitative approach. Many of the sociologists I worked with would turn up their noses at the phrase "computational social science" and were loathe to discuss issues like biased sampling, but the best ones (IMO) used qualitative observations to drive later large-scale quantitative study, which I think should be the de-facto standard for social science research.
Their reliance on ethnographic studies can be useful for verifying the existence of some phenomenon you have a hunch exists in some form, but such research is woefully biased and wholly inadequate as a means of measuring the prevalence or magnitude of a phenomenon, which is why economics studies (or quantitative methods more broadly) tend to have more credence when presenting evidence on the same subjects.
"most of the interesting research being done in econ is outside of theoretical macro"
I'm not sure why that save economics from the discussion, when it's the theoretical macro what have a huge influence in the life of billions of persons and the title of the article we are discussing is "If Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists".
The libertarian comment is uncalled for, as most of the comments here don't express a political view, only criticism of the discipline.
It's not fair to say that it's theoretical macro that has the major impact on policymakers. Look at the most influential (in a political sense) economists/social scientists these days, and they're advising policymakers about things on a much more granular scale (eg: the particular effects of sub-components of the ACA on consumer behavior, the barriers to equality of opportunity in impoverished areas, etc.). I think the outsider view of economics is stuck in the "schools of thought" era, which has all but vanished from serious economics.
And the libertarian mention is called for when the other comments are using common dog-whistles for libertarian distrust of central banking (via a sort of "fruit of the poisonous tree" argument).
A. Has never read an economics research paper
B. Only know economics as monetary policy (or macro more broadly), and as a libertarian is inherently skeptical.
Currently, most of the interesting research being done in econ is outside of theoretical macro, so the knee jerk libertarian "economics is broken" meme doesn't hold much water as the topics and methods are pretty dissimilar. A developmental microeconomics field study in rural India is a different beast entirely from a macro theory paper. For a sample of the diversity of economics research, see here: http://www.nber.org/papersbyprog/
Returning to your comment, the issue of storytelling, in a nutshell, was what drove me crazy when working closely with qualitative sociologists. Trying to discuss falsifiability in their study design was maddening. Sociology doesn't need to adopt the same research model as applied economics but they do need a serious look at their research methods, and I have more respect for those who try to take a quantitative approach. Many of the sociologists I worked with would turn up their noses at the phrase "computational social science" and were loathe to discuss issues like biased sampling, but the best ones (IMO) used qualitative observations to drive later large-scale quantitative study, which I think should be the de-facto standard for social science research.
Their reliance on ethnographic studies can be useful for verifying the existence of some phenomenon you have a hunch exists in some form, but such research is woefully biased and wholly inadequate as a means of measuring the prevalence or magnitude of a phenomenon, which is why economics studies (or quantitative methods more broadly) tend to have more credence when presenting evidence on the same subjects.