This book is the first systematic study of measurement activity at a national metrology laboratory, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) within the U.S. Department of Commerce.

This book investigates why economics makes less visible progress over time than scientific fields with a strong practical component, where interactions with physical technologies play a key role. The thesis of the book is that the main impediment to progress in economics is "false feedback", which it defines as the false result of an empirical study, such as empirical evidence produced by a statistical model that violates some of its assumptions. In contrast to scientific fields that work with physical technologies, false feedback is hard to recognize in economics. Economists thus have...