Does economics follow the scientific method? NO

The New Economist asks this question with its post "Does empirical economics follow the scientific method?"...the post references a paper titled Do Economics Journal Archives Promote Replicable Research? where "The authors attempted to replicate the results from 138 empirical articles in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review. Of the 138 articles, 29 employed software they did not have or used proprietary data, and were excluded. Of the remaining 117, they were able to replicate only 9 of them: a lousy 8 per cent." The study concluded that the academic economics community creates strong disincentives to researchers who might wish to test the validity of any particular piece of research through attempts to reproduce results of said research.