Read This Now - SuperFreakonnomics, A Super Waste of Your Time

I've been increasingly disappointed in the quality of the posting and general work and thought on the Freakonomics blog of late, and now with a new book out I've been wondering whether I should try and make time to read some of it.

Reviews on the climate change section lump the authors squarely in the George Will camp and that's not a good place to be if you'd like to remain a respected author or academician (Right wing editorialists being another breed altogether.) Which makes me think I have better ways to spend my now (grad school is a lot of work) more precious time.

To seal the deal lets turn to Ezra Klein who'd like to point out that the problem isn't so much that Dubner and Levitt get climate change wrong it's how they go about getting it wrong and that they make those same errors throughout the book...

But before people begin believing that the problem with Super Freakonomics is that it annoys environmentalists, let's be clear: The problem with Super Freakonomics is it prefers an interesting story to an accurate one. This is evident from the very first story on the very first page of the book...

You can go on and on in this vein. It's terrifically shoddy statistical work. You'd get dinged for this in a college class. But it's in a book written by a celebrated economist and a leading journalist. Moreover, the topic isn't whether people prefer chocolate or vanilla, but whether people should drive drunk. It is shoddy statistical work, in other words, that allows people to conclude that respected authorities believe it is safer for them to drive home drunk than walk home drunk. It's shoddy statistical work that could literally kill somebody. That makes it more than bad statistics. It makes it irresponsible.