 McCloskey does not, in fact, want to preclude the possibiity that economists are sometimes persuaded when they should not be or are not persuaded when they should be. For she herself criticizes the bad habit some economists have of conflating statistical significance with economic importance (1985, ch. 9, McCloskey and Ziliak 2003, Ziliak and McCloskey 2008). McCloskey typically characterizes rhetoric descriptively as the study of what in fact persuades, but sometimes she instead characterizes it normatively as the study of what ought to persuade (1985, ch. 2). And if rhetoric is the study of what ought rationally to persuade, then it is methodology, not an alternative to methodology. Questions about whether economics is a successful empirical science cannot be conjured away.