1/8 In a conversation with one of my profs about yet another RCT 'proving' a well-known field-survey-based result using 'rigorous' data analysis, he remarks: "It is a sign of *dumbification* of Economics if you need a thousand sophisticated tools to 'prove' such an obvious point"

2/8 What does this dumbification imply? While there is a lot to gain from this recent turn in economics towards empirical sophistication, it is increasingly becoming a mere advancement of tools, which are being applied to rather trivial questions or answers to which are known.

3/8 Top journals often also fall prey to this turn, where sophistication of tools is prioritised over the question being explored. The arguemnt ofc is not against rigour (broadly defined), rather that of a wilful trading of questions for tools. +

4/8 Such trade off then is an obvious symptom of the 'bastardization' of academia and research, where people enter to play the game (i.e., get published, receive grants, be known, be closer to power), without any serious interest in a serious intellectual inquiry. +

5/8 Ofc this was/is possible without the empirical turn as well, but the more shiny objects we have to show off, the more it is to distract from the real questions. An example in the next tweet. +

6/8 E.g., there are enough RCTs proving how better nutrition helps performance in school, or the effect of role model, or the provisioning of productive assets, there is less interests in more pertinent questions about the process through which poverty is actively created in...++

7/8..the reproduction of the sys, or the role of caste/race/gender in creation/perpetuation of the system and how these identities themselves are reconfigured w these interactions, or the role of power in inequality or creation of norms and how norms are implicated in the system.

8/8 The argument is not one against use of empirics- it's a powerlful tool, which if used wisely (as has been in several cases) advances knowledge significantly. The questioning is of the privileging tools over pertinent questions, and of choosing power over pursuit of knowledge.