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Economists like to think they are involved in a scientific endeavour. They make a distinction between normative and positive economics. Positive economics is claimed to be free to merely report on economic matters and not have any position of what should be done in the way of economic policies. This may be an ideal, but the economist who doesn't think he or she should be making policy and even running the government is hard to find. When economists do get down to discussing science, their picture of science is a very distorted one and does not match up to the picture a genuine scientist has of science.
For the way science works, it is worth going back to the man who was first (in the western world) to put down on paper how to do science. Apart from being an officer of Queen Elisabeth I and King James I, and being involved in politics, Francis Bacon published books on knowledge and learning trying to lead people away from the nonsense of alchemy. The most important book, "Novum Organum Scientiarum" (New Organ of Learning) was published in 1620 and became the guide for many scientists that followed rather than Aristotle's "Organon". Bacon's inductive method is composed of two parts: the negative process ("pars Destruens") and the positive process ("Pars consturuens"). The negative process is concerned with freeing the mind of all prejudices and preconceptions. Bacon called these errors idols and had four categories of them. The mind, liberated from these errors or idols, can undertake positive work, the interpretation of nature as an independent constructive process. This involves three constructs: building a table of presence ("Tabula Praesentiae") listing all the cases wherein the phenomenon exists whose formal cause is sought. Secondly: building a table of absence ("Tabula absentiae") listing all the cases which the phenomenon under analysis does not appear to be present. Thirdly: The table of degrees ("tabula graduum") listing the increase and decrease of a given phenomenon in one object or in different objects. This leads to understand the formal cause (law) of the phenomenon itself. If the interpretation of the observations is sound, it should be possible to make predictions on the basis of theories the data suggests. However, this is not enough as to have a high level of correctness, it is important to devise and execute experiments that are capable of falsifying the accepted theory. So economists, put aside those assumptions and theories you accept as a given and make some careful observations.
The 17th century saw many scientists applying Bacon's ideas successfully. Most outstanding was Newton's theory of gravity and the use of calculus. Kepler's laws of planetary motion were explained. The universe seemed to work to exact laws - it ran like clockwork. Following Adam Smith's work, people theorised about economic matters and there was an expectation of immutable laws . Jeremy Bentham theorised about his concept of utilitarianism. No doubt he wanted the appearance of being scientific, so he wrote about his "felicific calculus". Economics has mimicked science, by expounding various "laws". The financier Gresham was responsible for Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out the good".
The 19th century saw Leon Walras consciously setting out to develop "a mechanics of utility" on the way to having a set of laws to justify a theory of markets based on the pursuit of self interest leading to an optimal economic outcome. The supporters of this "neo-classical economics (NCE) have a disdain for empirical observations in favour of asserting the theory dogmatically in spite of occasional "market failures" (market theory failures).
Dr Schumacher in his book "Small is Beautiful" recalls the founding of a professorship for political economy at Oxford 170 years ago, when many people were by no means happy about the prospect. Edward Copleston, the great Provost of Oriel College, did not want to admit into the University's curriculum a science 'so prone to usurp the rest'; even Henry Drummond of Albury who endowed the professorship in 1825, felt it necessary to make it clear that he expected the University to keep the new study 'in its proper place'. The first professor, Nassau Senior certainly did not want to be kept in an inferior place. Immediately, in his inaugural lecture, he predicted the new "science" 'will rank in public estimation among the first of moral sciences in interest and in utility' and claimed that 'the pursuit of wealth ... is, to the mass of mankind, the great source of moral improvement'.
I have been told that Aberdeen was one of the last Universities in Britain to accept economics as a valid discipline for university study. The Professor of Anatomy resisted it, describing it as a "depraved trade".
The standard University text of economics, "An Introduction to Positive Economics" by R G Lipsey, starts with several chapters trying to convince the reader that the book is scientific and objective. However, he does admit that "there are many observations for which no fully satisfactory theoretical explanation exists".
H V Hodson in his book "The Diseconomies of Growth" in discussing growth in the poorer half of the world and what is judged the answer for them, says "For economics if it is a science, ought to propound universal propositions, not propositions that are true only of certain times or places, unless the limiting conditions are clearly written into the propositions themselves. There cannot be one law of economic growth in richer countries and another in poorer, unless the law itself is expressed in terms of relative riches or poverty."
Economists do not have any simple universal propositions that are worthy of a "science".
You would think that in their first year, an economics student would get some practice making some observations under supervision. Good practise could be had getting every student to go out into the "real world" of industry and make economic observations in the matter of costs of production. They could study the economics of the firm and construct a plot of unit costs versus rate of production and see how much cheaper the unit cost is when production is decreased. This should be done before the student is indoctrinated in a result that is actually rare. The so-called Law of diminishing returns seems to have little data collected to justify its universal application.
When it comes to economists studying the economics of science you cannot trust them to get it right. The Treasury officer, Roger Kerr was quite deceitful in his investigations. See the link "Deceit."