http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRxwLmD5bC0&feature=player_embedded
A summary would be a good way to entice us to actually watch it.
It seems the man in the video's entire critique, which took 11 minutes to get through, relies on that very stupid "empirical" experiment at about 9 minutes in. A summary of this experiment could save someone the wasted time of watching the video itself, and also encourage discussion:
In a study, graduate students were shown random items generally considered to be worth between $10 and $100 on the market. Each graduate student took the last two digits of their Social Security number, and that became the price at which the random items were offered to them. This study "empircally proved" that pricing is irrelevant because students with Social Security numbers that ended with two higher numbers (so say, the price of the goods were $86 each), the students were still willing to buy. The point being, these prices were random, thus lessening the calculation problem developed by the Austrian School. He also asserts by this that conditions can be held constant for empirical testing.
Now:
First of all, what mechanism exists to prove that the graduate students are telling the truth about what they would and would not buy at a certain price? Maybe the subjects of the study don’t want to seem cheap, and are lying about what they would do. In the real economy – with which this experiment lacks any degree of heterogeneity – you find out what people actually do when they act (in this case, make a purchase).
If you hold up a picture of a model and say, "If you were in a room with this person, would you ask this person on a date?" You might get a response, "Oh, yeah! Sure I would!" which might not be the case in the situation itself when there is something actually being sacrificed (security from embarrassment in this case, actual money and time in the other). It certainly cannot be said that this is empirical study.
Also, where are the goods in the scenarios of the study being sold? At a store? How did the graduate students find out about the store? Why are they at the store? To browse? Why are they browsing, because they just got bored one day? Do they simply like the feeling they get shopping? Did they go to the store to buy something in particular, maybe a gift for their significant other? To what extent do they like their significant other? What’s going on outside the store? Is there a hurricane coming that will prevent the grad students from shopping for a while? Is there an event going on that night for which you urgently need to buy something, say a box of chocolates or a bottle of wine?
None of these variables can be held constant, even if economists claim they can be by simply ignoring them in their "empirical tests."