The issue being debated is an issue of selection. In an earlier example to explain why ships collide at night, it was argued that a reaction such as "that's interesting" was sufficient to selectively retain a conjecture, independent of additional efforts to verify it. Eventual attempts at verification may occur sometime later but, for reasons discussed by Lindblom ( 1987), Gergen (1986), Henshel (1971) and others, the value of a theory does not ride on the outcome of those tests. The reason it does not is that validation is not the key task of social science. It might be if we could do it, but we can't-and neither can economists (Lindblom, 1987, pp. 516-517).