Is Economics a Pseudo-Science?

[Inverted Things]

Yes and no.

I took three undergrad courses in economics, and it struck me as basically generalized reasonable sounding nonsense. Kind of like psychology but without experiments (i.e. Pavlov's dog).

However, I have been well assured that graduate level economics is very scientific. Just another example of how everything you learn as an undergraduate is a lie--if it wasn't then we wouldn't need graduate school.

[Inverted Things]

It's a social science, which makes it inherently "unscientific" in some respects.  But I begrudgingly place it separately from the "pseudosciences", even if it's too ridiculously "treating human behavior as rational" for my liking.  I like my irrationalities, tyvm.

Psychology is drifting towards the natural sciences, YH

To my mind, psychology is 1/2 science and 1/2 not science. There are some great psychological experiments being done which improve our understanding of humans greatly.

There are also some very pseudo-scientific undercurrents in the discipline. For instance, Piaget's theories have been thoroughly discredited (see Devlin, The Math Gene) but many psychologists continue to expound his ideas. Another example: psychoanalysis still has an enormous following, and it's profoundly unscientific since it relies on completely subjective data.

In an introductory psychology course, one learns about many of these excellent experiments while learning also about the discredited/unscientific musings of Piaget, Freud, Jung, et. al. In an introductory economics course, one doesn't get a single statement precise enough to refute.

[Inverted Things]

It depends on the version of economics espoused.

Classical/Keynesian economics are scientific, and so is Monetarism, since they all draw conclusions, which can be described mathematically, only from observations of transactions of actual human beings.

Neither Marxism and Austrian School "economics" are scientific, since they both depend on deductive reasoning from arbitrarily defined premises, the utter antithesis of a science.

Playing devil's advocate, I'd like to point out that Einstein came up with his theories of relativity by reasoning from arbitrarily defined premises.

I think the true test of a science is "can these theories be tested?" If the answer is yes, you probably have a science.

[Inverted Things]

In the psychology classes of today, you learn how thoroughly discredited Freudian psychoanalytic technique is.  Even my two-week Clinical Psychology summer high schooler class teacher completely agreed with that, and he was the most "neutral everything has its proponents so I shall try to be objective" I know (which comes, I think, from him being a clinical psychologist ).  Your assertion that psychoanalysis "has an enormous following" is patently false, by the way; I believe only 15% of clinical psychologists (the only ones who I have information on) have claimed such an inclination, and they are primarily situated around New York City (where people can afford psychoanalysis, "coincidentally" enough ).

Piaget fits better with sociology, anyway.

I guess I got the education I paid for at a liberal arts college