I agree that politicians could--and often do-- misue a genuine science. That is indeed perfectly plausible. LIkewise, corporations misuse science and statistics in their advertisements. Selling something requires deception, whereas science is about telling the truth. So the two are certainly at odds.

But my point here about economics is that the models are too Platonic to deal with messy reality. Just compare economics with Platonism or theology. The math or the religious creed is unfalsibiable because the proponent can always blame the material world for the apparent failure of the abstract heaven or of God's kingdom to apply.

Likewise, how could the economic models be properly tested if the models will always have to pass through politics, sociology, psychology, and history, as it were, which complicate the proposed economic relationships and thus provide cover for the models? Of course, we're supposed to detect approximations of the economic equations, but even when there's an apparent falsification, the economist can always retreat to blaming the political or historical complexities rather than the math. How is that move different from the theologian's? It's a retreat to dogma.

My point, then, isn't so much that the Truss affair itself falsifies libertarian economics. It's that economists' reaction to it is revealing since it tells us what to watch for in other cases of their models' apparent failure.

But I also argue that in Truss's case, the politics and the economics aren't as separate as libertarians would want us to believe. Truss wasn't abusing libertarian principles, but applying them boldly.