I think the real problem is, is that the humanities -- the social sciences in particular -- have proven themselves to consistently build bad models with unproven assumptions. These assumptions have been leveraged to directly influence policy (instead of, say, trying a lot of different things and seeing what works).
Here's a concrete example of a paper [1] that just came out, attempting to impact COVID19 policy, from a very "respectable" set of academics at Yale -- that is based on a flat out fabricated economic model:
We focus primarily on the moderate scenario. That is, our baseline assumption is that diminishing returns play a larger role than accelerating returns (so that α ≤ 1) but not so large that they lead to α < 0. We stress that U depends both on the variation in economic value attached to different activities and on the model governing the disease transmission
Translation: we made some equations that makes the BAD thing BAD and the GOOD thing GOOD.
Here's a concrete example of a paper [1] that just came out, attempting to impact COVID19 policy, from a very "respectable" set of academics at Yale -- that is based on a flat out fabricated economic model:
We focus primarily on the moderate scenario. That is, our baseline assumption is that diminishing returns play a larger role than accelerating returns (so that α ≤ 1) but not so large that they lead to α < 0. We stress that U depends both on the variation in economic value attached to different activities and on the model governing the disease transmission
Translation: we made some equations that makes the BAD thing BAD and the GOOD thing GOOD.
[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.19.20107045v...