Lifted from the Weasel King

[james_davis_nicoll]

If this error turns out to be an actual mistake Reinhart-Rogoff made, well, all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel."

Comments

[kla10.livejournal.com]

Krugman seemed to be selling this as the researchers deliberately avoiding/ignoring data that didn't fit their hypothesis, and politicians taking the study seriously only because it suggests policies they approve of.

Why it's being sold with a "LOL math error" soundbite, I'm not sure.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Because getting the ideologically appropriate results one wants by massaging the data, that's been done and expected.

Getting them because you added wrong, that's funny.

[sesmo.livejournal.com]

How did Krugman come into the story? The folks who discovered this problem are Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin of of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The article was written by Mike Konczal.

I do agree that the article says two deliberate selections and one mistake, all pointing in the same direction. Makes you wonder if it was an actual mistake.

[krfsm.livejournal.com]

Krugman did two posts about the Herndon-Ash-Pollin review and, indeed, links to Konczal's article.