ABSTRACT
The chapter argues that the target of science is not the production of isolated facts but of theories able to explain these facts and thus our reality. Nonetheless, over the last decades, theory and empirical feedback have detached more and more from each other. This carries the danger for empirical economics to enter false feedback bubbles. A false feedback bubble emerges when studies producing false empirical results build on each other, such that the entire direction of research deviates from empirical reality in unpredictable ways. The chapter gives several illustrations of this phenomenon. It concludes with an appeal to reliable empirical evidence in order to prevent or overthrow such false feedback bubbles.
