Classical Values :: Special treatment for leading economists?

Special treatment for leading economists?

Should there be a special Paul Krugman Corrections Page at the New York Times?

When I cited the inaccuracies in a recent Paul Krugman piece (he said that "lethal federal ineptitude" caused the deaths of "thousands"), I made a joke of it, suggesting that Krugman blame alligators for the discrepancy.

What I didn't fully realize when I wrote that was how utterly unaccountable Krugman is -- not only to the public, but even to his employer and his peers. Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that the Times' own public editor, Byron Calame has complained about Krugman's refusal to correct his errors (as well as the Times' failure to enforce their policy):

Two weeks have passed since my previous post spelled out the errors made by columnist Paul Krugman in writing about news media recounts of the 2000 Florida vote for president. Mr. Krugman still hasn't been required to comply with the policy by publishing a formal correction. Ms. Collins hasn't offered any explanation.

As a result, readers of nytimes.com who simply search for "Krugman" won't find any indication that there are uncorrected errors in the columns the query turns up. Nor will those who access Mr. Krugman's columns in an electronic database such as Nexis or Factiva. Corrections would have been appended in all those places if Mr. Krugman had complied with Ms. Collins' policy and corrected the errors in his column in the print version of The Times. (Essentially, to become part of the official archive of The Times, material has to have been published in the print paper.)

Everyone makes mistakes, and I've made many. But I've never felt entitled to refuse to acknowledge or correct them. You'd think that Krugman -- a leading economist and professional shaper of public opinion -- might be held to a standard higher than my own.

Is Krugman the economist guilty of the same "bad math" I ridiculed?

....appreciating how many dead bodies there might be is a highly personal process. To one person, there might be hundreds. To others, there might be thousands, and depending on social skills and psychological considerations, still others might see the answer as millions.

Aren't higher numbers more relevant to what's going on in the world? If the goal of math is to make things relevant, then the numbers have to be higher, because otherwise, people might not care as much.

Again, I was being sarcastic when I wrote that. But what about Krugman? He's supposed to be an economist, and economists are supposed to be good at math by definition, right?

Can leading economists possibly be bad at math too? Or is it just that when they're bad at math they don't have to admit it?

(Now that I think about it, it probably wouldn't be the first time....)

MORE: Adding insult to injury, last night I saw that it costs $3.95 just to read Paul Krugman. Why should I pay for his mistakes?

I never paid any attention at all to this Krugman until I read some statement of his that Enron was more important than 9/11. From then on, I paid even less attention to the blockhead.

Makes me miss the days when Galbraith was the leading socialist economist.

Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · September 21, 2005 01:05 AM