Yes, formalism can be abused, and one really wonders if every paper published in the Journal of Economic Theory or even Econometrica has value from an econ point of view. Even the American Economic Association, a few years ago, had studies done by very prestigious members of the profession [Debreu, etc], that discovered that grad students in the best graduate programs [Harvard, MIT, Chicago] could solve a highly complicated general equilibrium problem, but could *not* answer relatively “simple” questions like what happens to the price of a hair cut when the price of scissor increases.

Again, formalism can be abused, yes, but dismissing modeling outright, I think is a mistake.