Sunday Dialogue - Economics" Ups and Downs - NYTimes.com Readers discuss the nature of economics and science. To the Editor: Re "What Is Economics Good For?" (Sunday Review, Aug. 25): I disagree with Alex Rosenberg and Tyler Curtain's characterization of science in general and economics in particular. They claim that a scientific discipline is to be judged primarily on its predictions, and on that basis, they suggest, economics doesn't qualify as a science. Prediction is certainly a valuable goal in science, but not the only one. Explanation is also important, and there are plenty of sciences that do a lot of explaining and not much predicting. Seismology, for example, has taught us why earthquakes occur, but doesn't tell Californians when they'll be hit by "the big one." And through meteorology we know essentially how hurricanes form, even though we can't say where the next storm will arise. In the same way, economic theory provides a good understanding of how financial derivatives are priced (notwithstanding Mr. Rosenberg and Mr. Curtain's snarky reference to the Black-Scholes model). But that doesn't mean that we know whether the derivatives market will crash this year. Perhaps one day earthquakes, hurricanes and financial crashes will all be predictable. But we don't have to wait until then for seismology, meteorology and economics to become sciences; they already are. The writer, a university professor at Harvard, is a 2007 Nobel laureate in economics. Readers React It seems that every discipline, not just economics, wants to be a science. We have social science, political science, and even religion wants to be a science - witness Christian Science and creation science. And all the science wannabes can "explain" many things. But none of them, including economics, can predict anything with significantly better than random success. Professor Maskin tries to compare economics with meteorology, but if economists could predict the next day's stock market move with anywhere near the accuracy that meteorologists can predict the next day's weather, they would be billionaires in short order. Economics is great at "explaining" the past, but has nothing even remotely reliable to say about the future. So I'm afraid that the honest assessment is that none of the social "sciences," including economics, really deserve the name as yet. Seriously? Alex Rosenberg and Tyler Curtain claim that economics doesn't qualify as a science because a science should be "judged primarily on its predictions." In the past eight years, several economists have used standard economic models to correctly diagnose the housing bubble, as well as predict the crash of 2008, the subsequent Lesser Depression and the stalled recovery because of inadequate stimulus. These are the models taught in Macroeconomics 101 and 102, not obscure or esoteric theories. Other economists" and politicians" willful ignorance of these models, to disastrous results, does not mean that economics is not a science. It means that, as argued in a recent Op-Ed essay by Adam Frank, we live in the "age of denial," during which it is acceptable to prioritize personal prejudices over scientific fact, regardless of the consequences. Someday we'll look back on this era as the period of idiocy that it is. Mr. Maskin's distinction between prediction and explanation as different but equally valuable goals of science is a false one - the two are inextricably linked. The ability to predict is both what makes our explanations useful, and what confirms that our explanations are correct. Mr. Maskin's choice of meteorology as example is a good one. It's true that in the long run "we can't say where the next storm will arise," but we are now very good at forecasting the short-term futures of tropical storms, so good that we can predict landfalls within miles and within hours, and give populations ample time to protect themselves (if people would only listen). If only economics could make such a claim! If only we could see a market crash developing in the mid-Atlantic and accurately predict that it would likely become a Category 4 hurricane and strike the Carolina coast within a few days!