Experimental economics and the artificiality of alteration

A neglected critique of social science laboratories alleges that they implement phenomena different to those supposedly under investigation. This charge was previously made against laboratory social psychology but applies also to the economics lab. The critique purports to be conceptual and so invulnerable to a technical solution. I argue that, in addition to questioning some specific experiments seeking to implement features of real societies, it constitutes a plausible argument that laboratory economics experiments are necessarily less demonstrative than natural scientific ones. More radical sceptical conclusions are unwarranted.