The hardest ideas to accept are the ones that make your work worthless
The main problem with economists is that they want to be physicists. They want to use math and science to 'prove' theories so they can preach their ideas the same way Newton lectured on gravity.
They've succeeded making many doctrines unquestioned and limiting debate on others.
The system of hiring, publication and peer review leads to a self-selection of new hires and thinking that mimics the prior generation. Think outside the box and you'll be living in a box.
The Institute for New Economic Thinking illustrates the problem in a great article with this line: "if this paper was correct, economics would be different."
That's what George Akerlof (aka Yellen's husband) was told when he first attempted to publish a paper that challenged the orthodoxy. It undercut the simplistic free market theories behind the papers that had earned so many professors tenure and had to be suppressed. Only by dogged determination (and luck) did it find a larger audience.
Ultimately, economics has proven the one true law of humanity: Self-preservation is all.
