The ladder of social science reasoning, 4 statements in increasing order of generality, or Why didn’t they say they were sorry when it turned out they’d messed up? — Andrew Gelman

Reinhart and Rogoff. Why didn't they take responsibility, a student asked Andrew Gelman. Statistics professor Gelman answers:  It wasn't actually about the data in the minds of R & R, so being wrong about it apparently made no significant difference to them. Empirical result? Meh.

Rationalists, or just ideologues with a cognitive bias?

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
The ladder of social science reasoning, 4 statements in increasing order of generality, or Why didn’t they say they were sorry when it turned out they’d messed up?
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

See also

Paper by Mohsen Javdani and Ha-Joon Chang
Marginal Revolution
Ideological bias and argument from authority among economists
Tyler Cowen | Holbert C. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center