The hard sciences

摘要

In at least one respect, the social, economic, political, and behavioral sciences truly are the "hard" sciences. A problem that is unique to these areas of research is that the subjects of the study (human beings) can read. Because of this, developing a theory to understand and predict an election outcome or a stock market crash is fundamentally more difficult than the problem of predicting a chemical reaction or an earthquake. In the case of the chemical reaction or the earthquake, the publication of the theory will not have any effect on the prediction. In the case of the election outcome or the stock market crash, if the prediction is public, and the theory is convincing, individuals may have incentives to take advantage of their knowledge of the theory to alter their behavior. Thus, if individuals believe a prediction that a stock market crash is imminent, they may decide to sell off declining stocks before the crash, implying that the crash will occur earlier than predicted.