 In order to protect the discipline from damaging criticism while still encouraging intellectual discussion, many economic thinkers strove to draw economics more decidedly within the realm of scholarly debate.The establishment of an economic society in this era of change indicated a desire to strengthen economics as a well-respected academic discipline, and to encourage debate and research between specialist scholars.In an announcement to the American Economic Association dated 1887 which proposed the formation of an Economic Society in Britain, scholars acknowledged common criticisms of economics and the contemporary disunity in the discipline.