Boys Named Sue: Blown Call, Injunction Sought

Here's the story: high school football team denied chance to kick field goal, on what was clearly a terrible call.

The video:

They have a point. But suing? Really? It was 41 yard field goal attempt, in high school. That is not a gimme.

Dance band on the Titanic

Oh my. Yet another story about economists behaving badly. This time it's Bruno and the Frey-ettes. Multiple self-plagiarism plus possible more traditional plagiarism or at the least incredibly sloppy literature checking.

Olaf has the full story here.

The cliff notes version is that Frey et. al basically published the same paper 4 times in different journals without any of the 4 referencing or making note of the existence of the others.

Further, there are multiple previous papers that use the same data, similar techniques and draw similar conclusions. None of them are cited in any of the Frey et. al papers.

The econ job rumors site has a huge thread on the Frey affair as well.

A dark day for economics

As if our failure to predict the financial tsunami, and our constant bickering and dithering about appropriate economic policies weren't enough, now comes Paul Ryan's Vino-gate to cast further unflattering light on us economists.

First consider the "whistle-blower" Dr. Feinberg. She seems to think you need a PhD in economics to be able to do basic arithmetic:

"I was an economist so I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out that those two bottles of wine was more than two-income working family making minimum wage earned in a week."

Man I guess she has STATA on her smartphone or something 'cause that's a real brain teaser:

700-(7.25X40X2) >O

I am going to go out on a limb and say that set of calculations owed more to her being a liberal who hates Ryan and others of his ilk than being an economist.

Then consider Ryan's two dinner companions, who also turn out to be economists and to be the ones who ordered the two bottles of wine (according to Ryan). They are not exactly covered in glory either.

First, as Ryan himself points out while throwing his pals under the bus, it's a douchebag move to order the most expensive bottle on the wine list and then to double down on it shortly thereafter.

Second, getting up and throwing F-bombs at a woman, even if she's being obnoxious (or "crazy" and "possibly drunk" as Ryan put it) just ain't cool.

People, I'd like to assure you that economists are not really like this at all, but what reason would you have to believe me?

Here's another take on the situation from our friends at Popehat.