ABSTRACT
Introduction There is a widespread feeling by many non-economists and a few rebels within economics that there is something fundamentally wrong with the culture for scientific discovery in the discipline of economics. This view is shared by George Soros, who has provided a substantial endowment to the Institute for New Economic Thinking and given it the mandate to transform the discipline of economics to develop more realistic and effective economic theories. To succeed in this endeavor it is essential to have a clear statement of what is wrong. This essay addresses this question, proposing that the fundamental problems are in the way the scientific method is practiced in economics, and suggests how this might be changed.
