His claim would be convincing if he gave an actual example of this, that truly happened. It shouldn't be too hard to take a topic like e.g. the nutritional properties of polyunsaturated fats and to chart over time the various contradictory claims made by various people.

--
$E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$

However, that's not really the main problem.  The main problem is that of unobservables.  In physics, unobservables are usually things that theoretically CAN be observed so the problem is finding out how to observe them in order to support or refute one's theory about how the physical world works.  What's interesting to physicists is what should be observable in the world but isn't.

In economics, like all social sciences, the unobservables are usually things that theoretically can never be observed but are presumed to exist based on thinking about the world in socially and existentially relevant ways. What's interesting to economists are what can NEVER be observed -- things like justice, power, happiness, and capability.  For example, in economics, one frequently is interested in human well-being, also called welfare.  However, we know that a large part of human well-being is relative to subjective judgements, a priori, just like aesthetics. This means that observable proxies for well-being have to suffice, such as income, or deprivation.  But they will always be proxies and there is always a danger when trying to apply discoveries based on those proxies to cases where the proxy might be a very misleading indicator of the underlying concept. The neoliberal prescription that economic growth necessarily makes the poor better off even if it helps the rich even more is a classic example of the perverse consequences of mistaking the observable proxy of income for the unobservable concept of well-being.

As I noted in an earlier comment, the large and growing academic fields of history of science and philosophy of science indicate that there may be more in common between social and natural sciences regarding consensus building than you're willing to admit.

But, as I also indicated in another comment upthread, the idea of applying the methods or discoveries of physical science to the social problem is mistaken.  Physicists and economists are interested in fundamentally different questions, which is something that too many economists today with "physics envy" for unnecessary appeals to calculus for argument should consider. Physicists want to know how the physical world works, or at root, "Did God have a choice?"  Economists, however, are interested in social questions -- questions of how human beings relate to each other. Issues of justice, power, and well-being are concepts for which the mental frameworks of physics have little bearing, and vice versa, even though there are notable crossovers at times (Darwin's theories of natural and sexual selection came from his readings of Adam Smith and other classical economists, for example, and Newton's writings on the nature of money were influential in the formative years of economics).

What I mean by independently productive Capital is property/ownership of productive assets.

In my view the key productive assets are:

(a) Location

(b) Energy

(c) Knowledge

In the Coarse Economics which I have worked out for my own delectation, these are the Factors of Production.

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

Technology Growth and Efficiency are regarded as two of the biggest sub-sections of Total Factor Productivity, the former possessing "special" inherent features such as positive externalities [i.e. profit margin; see MFP] and non-rivalness [sic! s/b monopoly conditions] which enhance its position as a driver of economic growth.

I wonder, why? Could it beeeeeeeeeeee, diminishing marginal cost of labor (L), where HUMAN substitute MECHANICAL input, so accelerating rate of profit captured per unit ouput per hour? I think so. Typical Forrester sell-sheet circa 2001:

Benchmarking Technical Productivity

Business process change contributes to prodctivity growth, but efficiency gains for US firms varied widely over the past decade. Execs should benchmark their recent performance --and turn to eBusiness for the next wave of productivity growth. [BWAH!] ...

• Process change. ...ERP systems, for example, have helped firms like Saab coordinate orders across business units ...
• Resource allocation. ...Technologies for better logistics administration ...By contrast, primary goods industries like steel have been slower to adopt these technologies...
• Knowledge sharing. As firms globalize, they are using techlogies like corporate portals to share critical information across the enterprise. CAD software and product-development databases, for example, helped contribute to electronics manufacturers' 10.6% average annual TFP growth...

Such peculiar strategy of capital formation has paid off both corporatists and entrepreneurs for centuries, explaining in part a historical tendency in political speeches to understate the ever expanding universe of fungible "labor" components (enjoying tax credit allowances).

TFP is also dependent on estimates of the other components [of LABOR]. A 2005 study[1] on human capital attempted to correct for weaknesses in estimations of the labour component of the equation, by refining estimates of the quality of labour.

"Quality-adjusted labor": An interesting topic covered by numerous economists at NBER and OECD. Consider Oliner and Sichel, Cummins and Volante.

See also Multifactor productivity which expresses more explicitly correspondence of terms of production to terms of price structure. Which is helpful to the curious, when the ol' S-D fails to predict dislocations of effective demand and producer output, in aggregate.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Another problem is the difference in buying power between then and now. A loaf of bread was available at about one pence, a standard "fair price" according to a concept left over from the middle ages. With a change in the price of raw materials, the price didn't rise or fall as it would today; the size of the loaf changed.

and a Qualification 2, i.e.

In 1776 only 22% of the American population participated in the monetary economy, but that number had reached 66% by 2000. ... The numbers 22% and 66% refer to the number of people who work for money, not the number, obivously, that participate in the monetary economy.

making the marginal utility of money a somewhat problematic basis of comparing preference.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

The London Symphony Orchestra (A) HBS case 9-494-034, 2000

A good concert it was. Not one of their best, LSO players reported afterwards, but a creditable performance. It was one of 109 public concerts which, along with some 230 rehearsals and 180 recording sessions, made up that year's work at the London Symphoney Orchestra. ...

The oldest of the four self-governing symphony orchestras in London (see Exhibit 1) the London Symphony Orchestra has a long-standing tradition of self-governance. The players who founded the orchestra were, at the turn of the century, members of the Queen's Hall Orchestra which was managed by Sir Henry Wood. The pay was not good, and players regularly sent substitutes (or deputies) to rehearsals and concerts whenever they could get higher-paid outside work. To elicit greater commitment from his players, Wood offered them a guaranteed wage in exchange for elimination of the deputy system. Forty-six orchestra members, objecting to what they viewed as a restriction on their freedom of choice, resigned and created a new, self-governing orchestra --the London Symphony Orchestra. ...

In 1993 the competitive stakes were raised for the [four] London orchestras (as well as for the nine other professional symphony orchestras in England) when the British government, suffering its worst recession in years, devolved considerable authority for support of the arts to regional and local levels. It became unclear whether the national government would continue to be the principal benefactor of British orchestras --and, if not, where new support could be found and whether it would be sufficient to sustain all four of London's self-governing orchestras...

Although the LSO regularly filled 85% of the seats for its Barbican Centre concerts, revenues from those concerts accounted for less than a third of the orchestra's annual budget. Of a total income fo GBP 7.7 million in 1992-1993, 63% came from ticke sales (including UK and overseas tours); 29% from government grants; 7% from corporate sponsorship; and less than 1% from its endowment. By comparison, a representative major symphony orchestra in the United States earned 51% of its income from ticket sales and received only  9% from governement grants; the remaining 40% was made up from the orchestra's trust and endowment income and from the contributions of individuals, corporations, and foundations. Like other British orchestra's, the London Symphony Orchestra was highly dependent on public subsidy for its survival. ...

Compensation at the LSO, like that at the other self-governing orchestras in London had always been on a fee-for-service basis. A player's total compensation depended upon the amount of work the orchestra did and the amount of income generated by that work. In recent years, the LSO had establed a base level of compensation for its players to provide them with a modicum of financial security. Under the development plan, players were required to play in 85% of the orchestra's scheduled concerts and, in return, their base compensation was raised 15%.

und so weiter with the widget per hour counts...

The London Symphony Orchestra (B)

One of the most important parts of the LSO's bid for Stabilisation Funding was the desire to conduct and in-depth investigation of its audience. A survey was distributed to 35,000 people who had attended an LSO performance within the previous year. The survey revealed that the primary constituency of the LSO audience was not the faithful, music-knowledgeable subscriber, but infrequent visitors who only attended, on average, one performance per year. These infrequent attendees, who comprised 86% of the audience, ...accounted for 28% of the tickets sold.

I surely welcome any updates to this information.


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.