Unlike Ed, I wasn't lucky enough to have had Bob Tollison as a professor, but I was heavily influenced by his work too. His brand of in-your-face applied micro/public choice was an inspiration to me as a student. Also I think his 1985 Presidential Address to the Southern Economic Association is as fine an essay on the methodology of economics as I've ever read. My favorite part:

Consider a fanciful example. Suppose that an economics journal offers a prize for a documented refutation of the law of demand. A young economist has an ambitious idea - why not produce a refutation in the local market for toothpicks? That is, enter this market, behave in contradiction to the law of demand, observe and write up the results, and submit them for publication. While all this is quite plausible, at least in a short period of time before toothpick producers get wind of the economist's behavior and raise their prices until his demand curve is negatively sloped, the journal editor would not accept the paper. The paper could show a "verified" upward sloping demand curve for toothpicks in Floyd, Virginia, ceteris paribus, but the editor would reject it and with good reason. The rejection letter would read like this.

Dear Professor X:

We have considered your paper carefully, and though it appears correct in all its essentials, we cannot accept it for publication. Our reason is that you have produced an upward sloping demand curve while yourself obeying the law of demand. That is, your demand curve for experimentation has a negative slope. Otherwise, why did you choose toothpicks rather than diamonds? So we conclude that the demand curve for refutations is negatively sloped and that your proof is invalidated by your own behavior.

Sincerely,
Managing Editor

Economics is economics.

ATSRTWT: Economists as the Subject of Economic Inquiry by Robert D. Tollison
Southern Economic Journal Vol. 52, No. 4 (Apr., 1986), pp. 909-922.