Friday, January 11, 2013
Mike Kimel — Why Much of the Population Thinks Economists are Charlatans
What happens if you do the same thing in another field? What happens if to a guy who peddles Lysenkoism in Biology? Think they'll make him Dean of a prominent Medical School? A physicist who makes her life work debunking the Michelson Morley experiment ain't gonna go far either. Obvious charlatans in biology or physics or chemistry get treated like charlatans by people who call themselves biologists, physicists and chemists, even those who work in different parts of the field. People who call themselves economists (whether macroeconomists or otherwise) sit on panels and attend conferences with the obvious charlatans. They shake hands with the obvious charlatans, they don't spit on the floor and turn their back on the obvious charlatans, and most damning of all, they don't refer to them as obvious charlatans. And meanwhile, the obvious charlatans do very well. Fudging and shading the data can pay very well, especially if one is well spoken and looks presentable
Angry Bear
Why Much of the Population Thinks Economists are Charlatans
Mike Kimel | Principal Consultant at Analytic Economics
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Mason Gaffney in his paper Logos Abused had some ideas for what academic economists of good will should do about charlatanism:
Unmask and expose everything phony and venal. Keep alert to the historical tendency of organizations to degenerate and regress toward the mean, and of insecure philosophers to use ink like the squid to blind the world about them. Accept the need of uncharitable measures to combat intellectual fraud, the ultimate white-collar crime which is the more dangerous for being legal. Bend backwards to avoid dicaeologia, the vice of self-righteousness that excuses one’s crimes by one’s circumstances; but be willing finally to play rough, considering that malice to frauds is charity to students.
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