Economic Folly

I'm reading this article which says that sales figures rose "unexpectedly" and "defied economists' predictions." I've read several articles like this one, and they have phrases of predicted doom such as this:

...which marked the weakest holiday selling season since at least 1969.
"This is a big surprise, though the net rise in sales is less impressive than it looks because (December and November) were revised down by 0.3 percent each," Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a research note. "The headline relief today is welcome but it is unlikely to last."

Now, I work in a scientific field, where if the facts don't work out the way the model predicts, we assume the model is wrong. Facts, as John Adams once said, are stubborn things. I am not going to say that the economic woes of this country are over, especially since I am convinced my government is going to be working 24 hours a day to make sure they continue. However, the model predicted a worse economic situation than the one which appeared. People didn't act as predicted.

As I say, in my field, we don't make excuses for faulty data, and we sure as heck don't change the data, which in this case would mean FORCING people to behave the way you wanted them to and keeping them from buying or selling if you want economic activity to be bad. Change the economic model until it correctly predicts behavior. In the meantime, don't be surprised that people act differently than your wrong economic idea says they will.