Researchers overcomplicate models out of fear of disconfirmation rather than insight

Evidence

Although we have not found a hero, we have surely found a villain: prehedged models, or models ground out mechanically from motley data. The resulting “modeled” world appears about as complex (and thus mystifying) as the concrete world it models. In Hibbs (1973, p. 181), we find no illuminating simplification: We find only a complex world of variables, vertiginous with arrows and proportions. The artfulness of nature wins out over that of theory because, contra Bacon, nature is not “put to the test.” One should not be too censorious about this, since Hibbs’s deliberate aim is eclecticism. Gurr’s “model,“—more surprisingly, because based on an elegantly parsimonious theory—is not much less complex. Is not the reason fear of potential disconfirmation, even at the cost of mixing up a highly plausible line of analysis with its antithesis? — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4374

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Press coverage of risk-modeling innovators skews to personality rather than substance — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 1479