The empirical method works, too.
There was a lot of thinking in this world before the development of physics, even a lot of scientific thought. Repeated observation, maybe some experimentation, and then reasoning through the results, built much of human civilization.
Some things work, some things don't. Some things are real, some aren't. You don't need quantum physics to find this out, in engineering or politics. It's not always as important that people do research, as it is that they think about what they've learned or already know.
We've been told that reason and intellect have nothing to do with politics. Politics has evolved accordingly. Idiocracy is becoming a documentary.