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Ignoring the merits or not of the criticisms, I did find it interesting to compare how much effort the FT and Economist put into finding errors in this work and

Ignoring the merits or not of the criticisms, I did find it interesting to compare how much effort the FT and Economist put into finding errors in this work and how much exposure they gave their findings, compared with the way they have largely ignored problems in other far more influential studies that were much more flawed. For example Tol 2009, a flawed paper about the economic impacts of climate change which concluded that moderate warming would be economically beneficial[1]. That was cited (although not generally named) in numerous FT and Economist editorials and opinion pieces over the years yet as far as I'm aware they have not published anything about the recent correction. It was used as the basis for serious national and international policy and has contaminated many subsequent studies in the field. For years the author made regular appearances pushing the importance of the finding in western media. Yet even a fairly basic review of the paper would have spotted some of the errors (it was a meta-analysis and some of the values from other paper were copied incorrectly or had the sign reversed) i.e. even an FT intern could have spotted the mistakes. Updates to the paper indicate that the entire result was based on fitting a curve to a single outlier (a study by the same author) and additional studies since 2009 give a very different picture when included. As far as I'm aware Piketty's work has had little to no real world impact as yet to government policy or widespread public opinion (I might be wrong of course). Any errors it contained, while worth correcting, don't seem like they would have an earth shattering impact worthy of front page exposure and double page spreads while retractions in more influential studies go unreported. [1] More about that here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/05/23/the-gremlins-did-it-iffy-curve-fit-drives-strong-policy-conclusions/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/05/2... and http://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/tols-corrections/ http://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/tols-co...

TheAnimus 12y ago
> the way they have largely ignored problems in other far more influential studies that were much more flawed. From the FT article on the matter >Nobel Prize-winning economists have heaped praised on Mr Piketty’s work. Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton University said it was safe to say the book “will be the most important economics book of the year – and maybe of the decade”. It is something that clearly had been billed as an influential book, even the leader of the opposition in my country commented on it. Clearly someone felt it was worthy of review. Meanwhile, I'm not aware of any of my nations political leaders basing policy on the Tol 2009 paper. Generally such academic papers don't reach as many readers as this book has/will/wouldhave. I think the question of one investigation being a sign of a systemic bias is a bit of a moot point.
rafekett 12y ago
you shouldn't be surprised, FT and the economist have always had a deep right skew.
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
Piketty has caused a political firestorm and whomever publishes newsworthy stories with Piketty as a hook is guaranteed a good readership. No mystery here. Media outlets chase eyeballs, not some ultimate factor of how important a story is to mankind or not. [insert long discussion as to how this sucks]
scarmig 12y ago
Piketty's work is, frankly, much more important than one paper about climate change that has been alluded to a couple times. I had to look up that paper to know which one you were referring to, and I follow climate change very closely. Piketty has lead to a firestorm of criticisms and rebuttals and counter-rebuttals: virtually every major political and economic blog has addressed it. Yesterday I saw a pile of copies of it in a mainstream bookstore. They're in totally different leagues. Reinhart–Rogoff falls somewhere in between those extremes, and IIRC FT and the Economist have both mentioned its flaws.
DCKing 12y ago
Well well, Pikkety's book has been published internationally in April 2014 (French is not mastered well enough by most people, including European politicians, to take in). It takes a little while longer for something to affect public opinion or policy. Many years, probably. For what it's worth, it is known that Dutch politicians are reading it and have commented about it already.

TheAnimus 12y ago

> the way they have largely ignored problems in other far more influential studies that were much more flawed. From the FT article on the matter >Nobel Prize-winning economists have heaped praised on Mr Piketty’s work. Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton University said it was safe to say the book “will be the most important economics book of the year – and maybe of the decade”. It is something that clearly had been billed as an influential book, even the leader of the opposition in my country commented on it. Clearly someone felt it was worthy of review. Meanwhile, I'm not aware of any of my nations political leaders basing policy on the Tol 2009 paper. Generally such academic papers don't reach as many readers as this book has/will/wouldhave. I think the question of one investigation being a sign of a systemic bias is a bit of a moot point.

rafekett 12y ago

you shouldn't be surprised, FT and the economist have always had a deep right skew.

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

Piketty has caused a political firestorm and whomever publishes newsworthy stories with Piketty as a hook is guaranteed a good readership. No mystery here. Media outlets chase eyeballs, not some ultimate factor of how important a story is to mankind or not. [insert long discussion as to how this sucks]

scarmig 12y ago

Piketty's work is, frankly, much more important than one paper about climate change that has been alluded to a couple times. I had to look up that paper to know which one you were referring to, and I follow climate change very closely. Piketty has lead to a firestorm of criticisms and rebuttals and counter-rebuttals: virtually every major political and economic blog has addressed it. Yesterday I saw a pile of copies of it in a mainstream bookstore. They're in totally different leagues. Reinhart–Rogoff falls somewhere in between those extremes, and IIRC FT and the Economist have both mentioned its flaws.

DCKing 12y ago

Well well, Pikkety's book has been published internationally in April 2014 (French is not mastered well enough by most people, including European politicians, to take in). It takes a little while longer for something to affect public opinion or policy. Many years, probably. For what it's worth, it is known that Dutch politicians are reading it and have commented about it already.