"Today, all over the world, but first of all in the United States, hosts of statisticians are busy in institutes devoted to what people believe is “economic research.” They collect figures provided by governments and various business units, rearrange, readjust, and reprint them, compute averages and draw charts. They surmise that they are thereby “measuring” mankind’s “behavior” and that there is no difference worth mentioning between their methods of investigation and those applied in the laboratories of physical, chemical, and biological research. They look with pity and contempt upon those economists who, as they say, like the botanists of “antiquity,” rely upon “much speculative thinking” instead of upon “experiments.” And they are fully convinced that out of their restless exertion there will one day emerge final and complete knowledge that will enable the planning authority of the future to make all people perfectly happy"

~ Mises