Go talk to a biologist about "selective reporting" in the media vis-a-vis Creationism. Then go talk to the people at the NCSE about it, and they'll give you the definitive counter-crank handbook. They wrote it.

If a handful of geeks running a think tank on a shoestring budget can defeat the most lavishly funded science cranks this side of the Space Shuttle, then surely the economics profession can hardly claim as an excuse that penetrating the mainstream discourse is "too hard."

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

One of the mysteries of the way issues are covered in much of the news media is how certain views get ruled "out of the mainstream" and just don't get covered -- even when many well-informed people hold those views.

...

And here's the thing: in this case, there isn't any hidden evidence -- you can't argue that the CIA knows something the rest of us don't. And the voices calling for stronger stimulus are, may I say, sorta kinda respectable -- several Nobelists in the bunch, plus a large fraction of the prominent economists who predicted the housing crash before it happened.

But somehow, the pro-stimulus people are unpersons. Who makes these decisions?

The stronger the critic, however, the less serious they appear. It is a real problem.

The peak-to-trough part of the business cycle is an outlier. Carnot would have died laughing.