"Evidence is given, but it is relegated to a brief aside. The kids don't see the data for themselves. They don't learn how to work with it. They don't learn how the studies tested what they tested. They don't learn how to go verify for themselves how useful econ theories are. To these kids, econ theories must seem like received wisdom. Even evidence, when presented only as a brief aside with no understanding of methodology, must also seem like received wisdom. Again and again, I talk to econ students who complain that they are expected simply to swallow what they are taught - unlike in their science classes. College kids are smart, and many of them are skeptical. They grow up learning that "science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." That doesn't tend to sit well with the kind of "received wisdom" approach that almost every intro econ textbook takes. Nor should it."