Yes. And that's one reason why I don't buy arguments about economic 'rigor'. There's a narrative that goes along with the rigor, and the narrative isn't always right.
I don't understand your grievance with the usage of 'rigor'. I think there's a difference in occasionally failing to predict and (almost?) always failing to predict. When the field that consistently fails is often dependent upon autoethnographies and the like, it's hard not to criticize it for lack of rigor. Economics isn't perfect, but economists aren't basing their predictions on how they felt when they interviewed someone either. It seems to me that rigor is a perfectly valid distinguishing characteristic between the fields.
1) How much sense do equilibrium models make when money, and, especially, debt, which functions as money, can be created at the whim of certain participants (central banks, banks, credit-issuing companies) in the 'equilibrium'? It's ironic to me that the logic and analysis of scarcity is associated with the least scarce, most easily created material (money/debt) in the universe. At least with physics, matter can neither be created not destroyed. Feynman: 'There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.'
2) If you put a Keynesian economist, a neoclassical economist, and an Austrian economist (just to pick three flavors) in a room together and ask them to sort out what they agree and disagree on, the assumptions they'll make are more about narrative than about rigor... which would suggest that narrative is more important than the rigor folks give it credit for.
