(Full disclosure: Economics and Pol.Sci. major here.)

One Daniel Hausman, introducing Cambridge's Philosophy of Economics [1] anthology edited by him:

> > Premises assumed without evidence, or in spite of it;
> > and conclusions drawn from them so logically, that
> > they must necessarily be erroneous.
> > – Thomas Love Peacock, Crochet Castle
>
> Ever since its eighteenth-century inception, the science
> of economics has been methodologically controversial. Even
> during the ﬁrst half of the nineteenth century, when
> economics enjoyed great prestige, there were skeptics like
> Peacock. For economics is a peculiar science. Many of its
> premises are platitudes such as "Individuals can rank
> alternatives" or "Individuals choose what they most
> prefer." Other premises are simpliﬁcations such as
> "Commodities are inﬁnitely divisible," or "Individuals
> have perfect information." On such platitudes and
> simpliﬁcations, such "premises assumed without evidence,
> or in spite of it," economists have erected a
> mathematically sophistical theoretical ediﬁce, whose
> conclusions, although certainly not "necessarily
> erroneous," are nevertheless often off the mark. Yet
> businesses, unions, and governments employ thousands of
> economists and rely on them to estimate the consequences
> of policies. Is economics a science or isn’t it?

A theory in human sciences will be as persuasive as its postulates are verisimilar. Many schools of economics have encoded such verisimilar postulates into hosts of mathematical formulas and derivations which only add to the overall appearance of soundness.

To guard yourself against accidentally lending these postulates too much credit, I think the best technique has been described by an economist [2]:

> So in answer to the current question I am proposing that
> we now change the usage of the word Aether, using the old
> spelling, since there is no need for a term that refers to
> something that does not exist. Instead, I suggest we use
> that term to describe the role of any free parameter used
> in a similar way: that is, Aether is the thing that makes
> my theory work. [...]
>
> Aether variables are extremely common in my own field of
> economics. Utility is the thing you must be maximizing in
> order to render your choice rational.
>
> Both risk and risk aversion are concepts that were once
> well defined, but are now in danger of becoming
> Aetherized. Stocks that earn surprisingly high returns are
> labeled as risky, because in the theory, excess returns
> must be accompanied by higher risk. If, inconveniently,
> the traditional measures of risk such as variance or
> covariance with the market are not high, then the
> Aetherists tell us there must be some other risk; we just
> don't know what it is.

That book has some rhetorical elegance, and it certainly hides away is Aether, but if you look at it closely (and really, the chapters aren't so long that you'd be wasting time to read a couple), and try to substitute Aether for whatever hasn't been argued for or scientifically established (and that is a fine exercise in reading), you'll see there are a lot of holes in the reasoning which you may or may not be willing to invest your beliefs into.

[1] isbn:0521709849

[2] http://edge.org/responses/what-scientific-concept-would-impr...