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

[emceeaich]

25 years ago, Ken Rogoff taught macro to my incoming graduate class at Wisconsin. I must confess I don't remember much macro from then (sorry, my brain has always been oriented to micro and institutional.)

As someone who has worked on data analysis that affected real people's lives (postal rates and budget analysis) I wince in sympathy at making an error.

However, I'm now a programmer, and we QA stuff before releasing it. And I would think that before you drew a conclusion that would make so many people suffer, you'd double check it.

So what that tells me is that there's a real lack of empathy in people who are working on policy.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

If, on the other hand, they deliberately falsified data to support a preselected conclusion, they will be disgraced forever and have no career options but to go to work for the IPCC at triple their current salaries.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

None of the above comments address the fact that Amundsen cut trees along the coast for firewood.

It is now too cold for them to grow.

ADDED:

The complete unconcern of Netherlands land-creation project engineers with regard to supposed "rising sea levels" will no doubt be met by more handwaving.

[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.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

I am quite glad not to have been the copy editor who fact-checked that.

Science!

[asyouknow-bob.livejournal.com]

Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity budget states their study "found conclusive empirical evidence that [debt] exceeding 90 percent of the economy has a significant negative effect on economic growth."

Since the study has now been shown to actually show pretty much the OPPOSITE of this, we can now wait for a new Paul Ryan budget that takes the ACTUAL effect into account.