Skepticism, Science & Pseudoscience

salvorhardin

(9,995 posts)

4. Yeah, the climate change part of Super Freakonomics was an absolute mess

Fri Dec 16, 2011, 10:48 PM

Dec 2011

The article I posted goes into that a little bit, but it caused a huge stir in the science blogosphere when it was published. I'm not willing to go quite so far as to say Levitt and Dubner were deliberately misrepresenting the science. I think Levitt was just far afield of his expertise and Dubner is just more interested in being contrarian and sensationalist than he is in good science writing. I'm amazed that their editor didn't send that chapter out for fact checking though when s/he saw it was counter to scientific consensus.

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Freakonomics: What Went Wrong? [View all] salvorhardin Dec 2011 OP

I read Freakanomics and found it full of holes.... Scuba Dec 2011 #1

I did too salvorhardin Dec 2011 #2

Romm, Krugman, ... bananas Dec 2011 #3

Yeah, the climate change part of Super Freakonomics was an absolute mess salvorhardin Dec 2011 #4

Economists rarely utilize actual scientific methodology in their work. Boston_Chemist Dec 2011 #8

Well there was this one economist who used scientific methodology... Taverner Jan 2012 #11

Your review on GoodReads did not come up Lithos Dec 2011 #9

A brief followup from one of the authors of the article in the OP salvorhardin Dec 2011 #5

They're little better than numerologist bible-code hacks Nevernose Dec 2011 #6

I think that's a nice summary of economics. laconicsax Dec 2011 #7

"The science of explaining why the predictions you made yesterday didn't come true today" Nevernose Dec 2011 #10