Manufactured doubt deployed by agnotologists also operates inside economics

Evidence

The stance adopted in this chapter is that if agnotological procedures can be found regularly deployed in politics and biology, then we should not think it beyond the pale that they can be found in economics as well. Indeed, given the neoliberal drift in the profession in the last three decades, it would be more surprising if the agnotological manufacture of doubt had somehow bypassed economists altogether. In particular, the elaborate staged debate between the true believers in good old neoclassical theory and the advocates of judicious macroeconomic revision provides us with yet another paradigm example of pointless dissention and manufactured doubt, which only serves the purpose of maintaining the larger populace in a state of suspended animation: the audience only grows further skeptical of the economics profession if it becomes apparent that (as they see it) the neoclassical orthodoxy does not speak with one voice concerning the crisis, and consequently, no particular reform policy can gain much in the way of activist traction. Economists fiddle with their models, Rome (and Athens) burns, and the Neoliberal Thought Collective just grows stronger. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 669

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘staged debate between neoclassical true believers and macroeconomic revisionists’ that keeps the audience paralyzed lines up with Proctor’s agnotology and the broader strategy of manufacturing doubt by staging false equivalences. — connects to: Economics as a discipline profited from manufactured doubt rather than suffering from it — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 633; The economics profession used crisis theory as calculated doubt-pumping to defend orthodoxy — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 665; Manufactured doubt need not be consciously willed to paralyze economic reform — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 670 (+2 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: internal disagreements within an epistemic community can themselves be manufactured doubt, designed to disable policy traction — the appearance of pluralism as a control mechanism.

Broader Connections

• Manufactured doubt need not be consciously willed to paralyze economic reform #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 670
• The economics profession used crisis theory as calculated doubt-pumping to defend orthodoxy #exemplifies (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 665
• Economics as a discipline profited from manufactured doubt rather than suffering from it #qualifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 633
• Modernity institutionalises doubt, making all knowledge claims inherently circular #expands (0.72) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 408