“ Mathiness lets academic politics masquerade as science. Like mathematical theory, mathiness uses a mixture of words and symbols, but instead of making tight links, it leaves ample room for slippage between statements in the languages of words as opposed to symbols, and between statements with theoretical as opposed to empirical content. Because it is difficult to distinguish machines from mathematical theory, the market for lemons tells us that the market for mathematical theory might collapse, leaving only machines as entertainment that is worth little but cheap to produce.”
Romer's examples aren't quite the same as what this page talks about. He describes papers where the maths is valid - the conclusions follow from the premises - but it's not tightly tied to the real world via words.
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I think Paul Romer, economics Nobel laureate, coined this term in 2015
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20151066
“ Mathiness lets academic politics masquerade as science. Like mathematical theory, mathiness uses a mixture of words and symbols, but instead of making tight links, it leaves ample room for slippage between statements in the languages of words as opposed to symbols, and between statements with theoretical as opposed to empirical content. Because it is difficult to distinguish machines from mathematical theory, the market for lemons tells us that the market for mathematical theory might collapse, leaving only machines as entertainment that is worth little but cheap to produce.”
Following from "truthiness", coined by Stephen Colbert in 2005 to describe the state of politics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness
Romer's examples aren't quite the same as what this page talks about. He describes papers where the maths is valid - the conclusions follow from the premises - but it's not tightly tied to the real world via words.
Just in case people think I’m bad at reading with this comment, the original article didn’t cite romer.
I’m glad it’s updated since it’s a good improvement to the article but this makes my comment a bit less coherent.
Contrast to "only with mathematics can the scientist say precisely as little as they mean to say." (Bertrand Russell)