The commenters on either side of yours make it look like doubting the validity of economics is the province of people too lazy to make a real argument. I really don't want to take their side because of how they're presenting it. But somewhere in that idiocy there's a decent point to be made.

I've always been a bit uneasy about economics because people's behavior depends on their beliefs, and their behavior as economic agents especially depends on their beliefs about the the economic theory that motivated the design of their habitat.

I expect that if a population that grew up in a system designed under assumption X and happened to eat well and always have a roof, then they will behave in a way that confirms theories compatible with X.

On the other hand, if they experienced extreme economic strife under leadership that believes in the validity of X, then--as data points--they're more likely to influence economic theory testing in the opposite way.

How can you know whether your predictions are correct because they're objectively true about human behavior, versus them being correct because your sample set has been influenced by the same economic theory that motivated the prediction in the first place?

Is statistics really so powerful that it can eliminate the circularity from the situation?