This dependence has important consequences. The outcome of the experiment will be shaped by the earlier experiments that made it possible. Not every research project will produce facts as improbable as those examined here. But the prior experiments will make some kinds of data available and not others; will provoke certain intuitions that appear to make sense of them and not others; will suggest one set of arguments derived from these intuitions and not others; will give them the plausibility they need to circulate when other arguments would fail to impress; will provide academic economics with material to promote a more empirical approach to the discipline; and will offer routes to feed the conclusions back into further political projects and programs.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1986