Quote:
Originally posted by RallyJon
The biggest caveat is that most of his work (being an economist) involves running regressions on huge amounts of data. This produces a lot of correlations--from which a smart guy can draw sensible conclusions--but falls well short of proof.
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Good point. My wife is an economist, and does similar (though not as controversial) research. She focuses on Medicare/SSI trends in California by county. Some of the findings are very surprising, until you remind yourself that she is processing and regressing statewide data. This state has so many extremes and such a diversity of people, races, religions, etc. that it's very hard to draw any conclusions at all. Of course, if you're a macroeconomist, you just write a disclaimer about this and press on.