I wasn't casting aspersions on their previous credentials, but if anything that magnifies the seriousness of this situation. It looks a lot like unethical cher

I wasn't casting aspersions on their previous credentials, but if anything that magnifies the seriousness of this situation. It looks a lot like unethical cherry picking of data (the 'coding error' is really of secondary importance to me). I know economics can be considered on the transition from hard to soft sciences, and even within the field you have very soft-science schools like the Austrians to very quantitative approaches like 'freshwater'. But that doesn't seem to apply here. Maybe if they added caveats to their methodology it would have been different. I'm also not dismissing Cato or AEP out of hand, but nobody can deny that they are partisan think tanks. Their primary purpose is to provide cover for policy proposals, not original research.