I see things very differently.Oh, yes, economists do put a lot of emphasis on data and they put faith in their predictions and explanations based on that. Consumers making smart, informed decisions is an assumption of such economic beliefs. Other social sciences have realized and accepted you just can't assume and it's better to take steps to proactively inform people. And we also have lobbyists doing their thing to keep consumers misinformated and under informed (its why our nutritional fact labels are in metrics).
It's this informed consumer that's supposed to thwart unethical companies with people not buying from them. But all we see of this anymore is political expressions in the form of protest buying/not buying.