Steve Keen On Austrians Economics. Real knowledge, Disequilibrium & Credit

As Hayek wrote, economic theories can "never be verified or falsified by reference to facts. All that we can and must verify is the presence of our assumptions in the particular case."

So the mainstream approach is inductive, and the Austrian approach is deductive. The first draws generalizations from the data, the second applies preconceived generalizations to the data. A completely deductive approach is pre-scientific, however, which is why Austrians cannot legitimately claim to use a scientific method. Deduction does occur in science, but the generalizations are primarily based on other data, not A Priori assumptions!