Keep in mind you have to take care when reading Vixen's posts, and note that "having done a couple of Institute of Statisticians diplomas…" does not make the claim of having completed, earned, or been awarded such diplomas.
ETA: and now we have Vixen's admission that "having done" those diplomas means exactly nothing. Another meaningless claim.
Her claim to have studied biology, chemistry, and economics are unremarkable. At the (American) universities I've attended and taught at, those are basic requirements for all graduates, regardless of major.
As an engineering undergraduate I was required to take economics, as well as a life science and a physical science, each with a laboratory section involving student-designed experiments and lab reports. These were basic university requirements, common to all students who were to be awarded baccalaureate degrees, even in such fields as trombone performance. One could certainly take elementary physics as one's physical science, but as an engineering student I knew I was to be subjected to extensive training in that area, so I opted for astronomy. A number of courses qualified as one's life-science requirement, but I had been warned off Biology 101 -- by its faculty, no less. Instead I took osteology; my professor was actually also our state's medical examiner (akin to a coroner, for the benefit of our U.K. readers, but an appointed, not elected, position required to have appropriate scientific and medical credentials). Engineers also must learn statistics, including the noggin-baking field of statistical mechanics. (The author of one of the popular texts on this subject notes that its progenitors died by suicide.). So I left my first university knowing far more about how to operate Zeiss planetarium instruments and how to assemble human skeletons than most other recently-minted engineers.
It wasn't until my graduate studies that the formalisms of scientific methodology were taught. Yes, we exercised hypothetico-deductivism in astronomy. Yes, we exercised it in osteology. And yes, rudimentary statistical models were applied, as Kuhn advised us. But it wasn't until my PhD oral examinations that I really understood scientific methodology as it was meant to be employed by actual scientists doing actual new work. I would say someone who merely endured the entry-level courses taught in the undergraduate curriculum is probably not qualified to comment on methods of inquiry employed in the real world. I did poorly in economics, so if the discussion turns to that then I expect Vixen to know far more about it than I. I would expect that my entry-level study of it, poorly acquired and poorly recalled, would not stand me in very good stead.
Ultimately, academic qualifications considered, one must simply be able to demonstrate proficiency in a field in order to be accepted as competent in it. For years the head of my mechanical engineering department was an individual who had no license to practice engineering and no ME diploma. But he designed and built race car engines from scratch, and won with them at the local speedway. This is conclusive evidence that he had mastered the principles of engineering that I needed. It doesn't matter how much one wants to play up entry-level academic successes; if one can't correctly formulate a null hypothesis then one cannot expect to be accepted as competent in methods of inquiry.
