If you read David Henderson at EconLog or Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek, you know that a history professor named Nancy MacLean claims to have unearthed some sort of right-wing conspiracy involving James Buchanan, and this has gotten her some play in liberal media. However, David, Don, and other critics have pointed out what appear to be pretty blatant instances of MacLean twisting Buchanan’s words, even to the point of making it sound like he favors X when the full context clearly shows the opposite. My thoughts:

1. If the critics are correct, then MacLean’s breech of ethics is quite serious. If you are going to have an academy that claims to be searching for truth, then people have to play by rules. They have to be as open as possible about caveats to their own work. They have to try to be as fair as possible to those with whom they disagree. They have to strive for honesty and objectivity, even if these ideals may not be attainable.

2. However much I dislike mathematical formalism in economics, I have to say that it does impose some discipline. Maybe you can construct biased models and try to pass them off as scientific, as Paul Romer accused others of doing in his “mathiness” critique. But nobody uses x’s and y’s to conduct hit jobs and character assassination. There are some natural boundaries imposed by sticking to formal models. And when someone like Paul Krugman steps outside of those formal boundaries and writes newspaper columns, you can see the results.

3. James Buchanan won a Nobel Prize. Say what you will about the committee that decides on the prize, they do not sell their votes to the Koch brothers. Every year, they evaluate a body of work that is very difficult for non-economists to understand and very well vetted by other economists.

4. You can teach about methods that an ethical academic can use in research and writing. However, I do not believe that you can teach an unethical person to be ethical by offering a course in ethics. Instead, you have to police ethics. I think that the most important factor is a willingness to police your own side. If some economists in the conservative/libertarian orbit look at MacLean’s work and conclude in writing that it is basically sound, then that could help. Conversely, if some economists in the progressive orbit decide that she has indeed violated scholarly norms and they put that view in writing, then that could help. If neither side concedes, then it’s game over. There will be no such thing as a search for truth any more.

5. Michael Munger’s review describes MacLean’s book as “historical fiction,” and he says that she does a good job of it. But he stops short of hitting the ethical issues hard. I wish that a serious critical review would appear in a major academic journal.

John Taylor writes,

The network, which welcomes researchers interested in policy and model comparisons, is one part of a larger project called the Macroeconomic Model Comparison Initiative (MMCI) organized by Michael Binder, Volker Wieland, and me. That initiative includes the Macroeconomic Model Data Base, which already has 82 models that have been developed by researchers at central banks, international institutions, and universities. Key activities of the initiative are comparing solution methods for speed and accuracy, performing robustness studies of policy evaluations, and providing more powerful and user-friendly tools for modelers.

Why limit the comparison to models? Why not compare models with verbal reasoning?

I think that this is a larger question for the profession. I have staked out a claim that policy makers would be better off without the CBO’s models of health insurance coverage or Keynesian multipliers. I believe that policy makers would be better served by verbal reasoning instead.

The dominant view of the profession is that “it takes a model to beat a model.” There are a number of concerns with verbal reasoning. It lacks precision. It cannot be evaluate quantitatively. etc.

I wish to argue that when all is said and done, models often do more harm than good to the decision-making process. What are the best arguments against my view?