Is this something the right wing controlled press is keeping from us?

Meet Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard professors who thought they had austerity licked - and Thomas Herndon, the student who proved them wrong - Americas - World - The Independent

We had studies like this cross our desks at BIG oil all the time. We would always read them with one thing in mind... Do they make sense? What jumps out of this 'report' is that ALL of their examples lead to the same conclusion. There is always an exception to the rule but not in this case. That alone tells you there is something wrong.

There is a point of diminishing returns, but you have to spend money to make money and most people know this.

Most people, in this case, would not include Rep. Paul Ryan who depended heavily on this report to make up his budget.

Please note the 'making it up' part of that sentence.

I thought that this had already been discussed here,but maybe it was a different forum where I saw it.

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Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

It must have been since it is getting such a small response.

I was hoping to see some clever responses.

I did remember when this 'study' first came out and I thought it was skewed at the time. It was just too perfect in finding that it was correct.

Is it news when a scholarly article is found to be incorrect?

Is this the sole source of the theories investigated?

It should be news because the latest Paul Ryan budget, the ones the Republicans swear by, was based on the 'results' published by this study which has been proven to be incorrect due to the authors not knowing how to work an Excel spreadsheet.

They also found data which proved their theories were wrong, so they just threw that data out.

So far no Republicans have indicated this makes any difference to them. It's as if they like the 'facts' they run with them no matter how incorrect they are.

Policy based on info that is known to be wrong. Say.... Where has that happened before?

So you are suggesting that this article is the sole source of the theory, right?

Okay, I confess: I heard this on NPR on Monday.

The reporter on NPR wasn't terribly impressed because she indicated that the approach of these academics was one of several and that finding flaws in this one in no way invalidated the others.

It would be like checking the efficacy of different methods of introducing a medicine into the body. That some methods are better or worse than others does not mean the medicine is itself ineffective.

For once we agree.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know 90%+debt levels are bad. The study in question does not mention how much it costs to service that debt and how much of government spending goes towards it. Common sense says when your debt approaches the ability to service it, there is not any more left to spendon anything else. Doh!

But as an analogy, the old hockey stick graph that global warming turd brains like to throw out was debunked once the calculations were released. Seems that now matter what data you input, you got a hockey stick out. Didn't slow Al Gore down from milking the masses out of millions of dollars.

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Forget rational analysis. The important thing is to score political points.

Absolutely! The analysis won't make a damn anyway. They are going to continue with their MASSIVE debt increases, no matter what.

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Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

So even thought the study that Conservatives bet the farm on turned out to be in error Conservatives have no way to step back and rethink it?

As I have said before: Conservatives have one way of doing things. When that one way fails they give up and toss the whole thing to someone else to deal with.

Anyone can deal with a situation when things are going right. It is when things go wrong that leadership comes to the fore and corrects errors.

So far no Conservatives have stepped forward on this issue. They have blindly wandered along the laid out path and ignored any data that conflicts with their chosen solution.

When a problem arises then someone needs to deal with it. To lay back and say you are powerless because someone said you were is the Coward's way out.

The conservative Ryan budget was just as much of a joke as any other proposed budget of the last umpteen years. It doesn't even BEGIN to cut as deep as it needs to be cut.

If a PRACTICAL budget were proposed by ANYONE, it would be shot down by the bunch of self serving idiots of both parties that serve in our laughable federal gooberment. They would shoot it down because it would dig into the borrowed money that they use to buy votes with.

These people don't give a rats a$$ about ANYONE except themselves. They would wash your aging mother down the river and laugh when she drowned, if it would buy them one single vote.

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I refer you the NPR analysis, which basicly said no big deal because there are lots of otehr independently derived studies to the same general effect.

Look, publishing in academia is risky. One doesn't publish what is already known, one publishes something new -- a new approach to an old problem, a new method, a new process, a new theory, a new ... whatever.

When publishing something new, the chances are very great that a mistake gets past you and co-authors and editors and peer review. You hope the community has properly done its job, but since it's new, it is diffuclt for people to differentiate mistakes from novel findings. Think "Cold Fusion."

It is right and proper that other people check your work, check your data, check your methods, check your results. It is amazing how often some flaw or other arises, especially in data analysis. Sometimes people do not understand the data or methods and as a result, offer inappropriate review.

These authors tried a new and novel approach. It appears to have failed.

So what? It doesn't disprove the general theory, which has been described in other ways. To disprove the theory one would have to disprove the other methods or data.

It could happen. But probably not.

Think Climate Change. Did the revelations concernign East Anglia Universitity's email accounts change the Global Climate Theory? No. It discredited a few people who skirted the edge of ethical conduct. The theory remains intact.

Same for this event.

Want to make political hay? Go for it. But your foundation is unsound.