I quite enjoyed Duncan Watts’ article about the scientific method in business in the last issue of the MIT Technology Review. A principal researcher at Microsoft Research, he argues that business needs the scientific method even more than it needs technology. The steps toward learning about the world in a systematic way are clear, he argues: “start with some general question based on your experience; form a hypothesis that would resolve the puzzle and that also generates a testable prediction; gather data to test your prediction; and finally, evaluate your hypothesis relative to competing hypotheses.” Splendid. “Be skeptical of the data by all means,” he concludes, “but also be skeptical of plausible explanations, conventional wisdom, inspiring ideologies, compelling anecdotes, and most of all of your intuition.” Splendid, once again. The only thing he fails to add is that all of the above can always go into your hypotheses. And let it rip. The scientific method will eventually discard hypotheses of this sort, to be sure, but this may take many years or even decades. In the meanwhile, much money can be made in business, just like in science.