Talk:Thomas Piketty

Weblinks

The link to the curriculum vitae does not work anymore. --13Peewit (talk) 18:00, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Fixed his CV can now be found at http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/cv-en @13Peewit: Jonpatterns (talk) 23:19, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much. :) --13Peewit (talk) 01:12, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Unsourced or badly sourced claims

• The infobox says that the "influences" of Piketty were "John Maynard Keynes, Anthony Atkinson, Roy Harrod, Nicholas Kaldor, Franco Modigliani, Luigi Pasinetti, Robert Solow, Robert Barro, Simon Kuznets". That is unsourced. I have read a substantial part of Piketty's work but I cannot guess what in it is likely to have been influenced by Franco Mogigliani or Robert Barro, or even Keynes. The only one that is often cited by Piketty is Kuznets (though mostly because Piketty refutes Kuznet's thesis, so adding that without any explanation in an "influences" section is rather misleading. Absent more details, I think we should simply remove this section.

• "According to a study by Emmanuel Saez and Piketty, the top 1 percent of earners have captured more of the income gains under Obama than under George W. Bush". The source given is just a political rant by the Cato Institute. Citing the paper itself would sound more interesting, but in the context of this article, the quoted sentence would make sense only if Piketty and Saez say that the differences between the Bush years and the Obama years can be explained by national policies (and I doubt very much that they do). Does anyone have more info or can I just remove that ? --Superzoulou (talk) 14:27, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

• Also, school : keynesian (or "neo-keynesian") does not appear to make any sense to me. He may believe that keynesian ideas are right, but this is rather orthogonal to his research. I just cannot see what a "keynesian school" can mean in his field of work. --Superzoulou (talk) 19:44, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Citations and original research

Foremost, the "criticism" section is heavily cited. I am not sure what the issue here is about original research. Please specify more clearly. Second, the second paragraph of the intro is a restatement of the criticism section. Citations here are redundant, and the reader should direct his or her attention to the body of the article. Archivingcontext (talk) 17:45, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Looking at it, it's "cited" but the sources which are "cited" were being misrepresented. For example [1] or the Tyler Cowen piece. The rest was pure original research cited to works which do not mention Piketty and which were in fact published before his book came out.

Removed the nonsense from the criticism section. Hence, I will now remove it's "summary" from the lede.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:50, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

This debate seems to have evolved over the past weeks, but for the record, the content was a summary of the sources cited, not quotations and thus not a misrepresentation. These authors had substantive critiques of Piketty that were succinctly summarized to give the reader a sense of the debate surrounding the reception of his ideas. As for the critiques of social democracy that Piketty champions, these have developed over the past twenty years, of which Piketty's work and politics have been a part and are stated as so. Again, it is not OR or misrepresentation but a summary, which is what an encyclopedia article is supposed to be! Archivingcontext (talk) 14:39, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Neutrality

The so-called "criticism section" is in fact mostly a cherry-picked excerpt from the reception section of the article about the book. I'd propose to either expand this into a broader reception section here as well (perhaps by copying the quotes from Will Hutton and Paul Krugman into this article) or to confine all reception dealing with the book to the existing article about the book. --Sewonathy 17:31, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Given that most of the "criticism" section is about reception section, I'd think it would be more appropriate there. There is paragraph about an article criticizing Pour une révolution fiscale, but as Pour une révolution fiscale is barely mentionned in the article, I do not think it is worth mentionning its criticisms. And if it is, we should certainly look for something more consequential than the cited criticism.

That said, do we have any way we can choose which criticisms of the book we should cite ? I suppose that it is not our job to choose which criticisms are interesting and which aren't, and so we should primarily take into account the influence of the critic. Does it mean we need to cite [2] just because it was published in a widely read newspaper ? --Superzoulou (talk) 20:08, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree that the section would be more appropriate in the article about the book. And it is hardly useful to cite a criticism of "Pour une révolution fiscale" if its contents are not described in this article. My preference would be to remove the criticism section in this article unless someone shows that the cited reception here offers something more substantial than a (one-sided) selection of book reviews.--Sewonathy 10:14, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

How I like all those people who are so quick to make contentious reverts without ever showing up on the talk page. By the way, I still think Philippe Nemo's criticism has no place here unless the work to which his criticism refers is actually described in the article.--Sewonathy 07:31, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I removed Philippe Nemo's "criticism" as it does not belong in the subsection about Capital in the 21th century. As to the more general approach, it seems to makes sense to devote more space to negative than to positive criticisms, as they are more likely to add something new, but really I still do not know how we should choose which ones to add. For instance, Galbraith's cited criticism appears to be based on a misundertanding as a later comment by Galbraith himself suggests here. --Superzoulou (talk) 10:15, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

The danger of overemphasizing negative reviews is that it can convey the false impression to the reader that Piketty's work had encountered nothing but criticism or far more criticism than praise, which is not the case. There are certain criterias for selecting certain statements such as the prominence of the cited person (most obvious in the case of Paul Krugman). But any selection of reviews by Wikipedia users has also the danger of being arbitrary and subjective and is hard to defend if other users lobby for their favorite review to be included.

Another approach could be to attempt at some sort of a brief summarizing overview of the reception given that this is Piketty's biography article and the exhaustive description of the reception rightfully belongs into the article about the book. It would, however, be interesting if there is consensus for such an approach given that some users here are quick to revert without using the talk page and such a summary isn't that easy to write.

--Sewonathy 14:28, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

"Fabrication of data"

Not that it really matters but just a note on the "fabrication of data" charge added by an IP, in case the matter should come up again. The cited article has a rather aggressive tone but what it essentiallly says is that a graph is a book is misleading in that it only includes that working population between 18 and 65 rather than the whole population. This is arguably true -even though the caption of the graph is perfectly explicit- but that sounds rather ridiculous to mention that in this article (and of course that doesn't qualify as "fabrication of data"). --Superzoulou (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

According to what I could find out Bernard Zimmern is just a businessman. For such a fundamental charge to be cited, the critic should be at least a widely respected university scholar.--Sewonathy 17:09, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Reception section

That section needs to be collapsed with the main section on the book and summarizer per WP:SUMMARY. Most of the content is duplicated at Capital in the Twenty-First Century Cwobeel (talk) 22:23, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Once again, single reactions to and reviews of the book have been added to the biography article. As there are hundreds of different reviews of and reactions to the book this would be more fitting in the article about the book but not here. It would make great sense to replace the mention of single reviews with a real (and brief) summary of the reception of the book.--Sewonathy 13:59, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

The FT article has achieved substantial worldwide coverage in other RS sources - it is far from being one of "hundreds of different reviews" at that point. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:33, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Charges of fabricating data and the like are very serious. If there are scholarly sources which make that claim that's fine. Otherwise it doesn't belong here.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:29, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

The Financial Times' Chris Giles of the FT is an "expert in the field" and the story has made all the major wire services. We make no claims in Wikipedia's voice and we include his statement as well as to why he changed figures. Hard to get any more NPOV than that to be sure. Collect (talk) 20:49, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

NYT [3] Some of the issues identified by Mr. Giles appear to be clear-cut errors, and others are more in the realm of judgment calls in analyzing data that may not be fully explained by Mr. Piketty but are not necessarily wrong.

WaPo [4] How serious are these problems? And how much, if at all, should they change what we think about inequality? Well, the answer seems to be not too serious, except for the recent British numbers. Let's go through them. Giles identifies three basic types of issues. The first are simple transcription errors. He finds, for example, that Piketty accidentally entered Sweden's wealth data from 1908 instead of 1920

The next concern is methodological. Giles thinks Piketty should average European data by population, not by country. He doesn't like that Piketty draws trends between large gaps in the numbers. Or that Piketty labels data from, say, 2004 as "2000" on some of his charts. And Giles isn't sure why Piketty has put together some of his wealth data—which is sparse, and needs to be adjusted, if not constructed—the way that he has.

The last problem is the most significant. Giles points out that Piketty seems to have mixed up different sources on British wealth the last few decades, and overestimated their inequality. You can see Piketty's numbers (blue) versus the raw data (red) below. This does need to be explained.

Guardian [5] For the lay person attempting to referee the row, and having to interpret such abstruse concepts as the Gini coefficient and, as Gaffney neatly summarises, whether "the r > g inequality is amplifying the reconcentration trend", illumination is hard to discern. For its critics, further confirmation of why economics is called the dismal science

CNBC [6] For example, once the FT cleaned up and simplified the data, the European numbers do not show any tendency towards rising wealth inequality after 1970. An independent specialist in measuring inequality shared the FT's concerns.

This suggests the issue is pretty much "big news" and we ought not ignore it - just make absolutely sure it is covered in an NPOV manner. Collect (talk) 21:00, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

You're just dying to stick some allegations into a BLP… Nomoskedasticity (talk) 21:04, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

The wording I suggested is in keeping with all policies, and since no "allegation of a crime" is remotely involved, I find your snideness rather useless here -- this page is for discussing the article and not for making snarky remarks about any editor at all. The issue has made every major wire service, every major economic publication, and has international notoriety at this point. Cheers. Collect (talk) 21:22, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

The consensus of RS on the gravity of Pikkety's errors is not conclusive enough to justify inserting these allegations into the article. Collect's sources seem to be the ones with the most damning appraisal, and also deviate from the consensus, which seems to be that his methodology is questionable but that his errors do not equate to academic fraud or plagiarism. (For the record, I'm not a fan of Piketty's work. I consider myself pro- free market, though I'm sure I'm a "socialist" according to American conservatives and libertarians, as sane people tend to be.) Steeletrap (talk) 21:24, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually -- they are far from the most damning -- and the Guardian likes Piketty but still sees problems. I specifically chose RS sources which had been favourable to Piketty in the first place -- if we went with damning sources, the virtual paper would catch fire <g>.

Try [7]

His most damning claim: Piketty altered U.K. data to show that wealth distribution there is worse off than it appears to be. Piketty says the share of income going to the top 10% never fell lower than 60%, and since the end of the 1970s has returned to 70%, a level not seen in 70 years. But the data Piketty himself cites shows the top 10% share of wealth is no greater than 50%, and may be as low as 42%.

So far, Piketty has only offered a somewhat vague response. It basically boils down to: “This stuff is complicated, but I’m trying to be as transparent as possible.” from Slate [8] It's a bit early to draw conclusions about the FT’s report. But the disagreement over Britain is jarring. And given that Piketty’s book is seeking to make universal claims about the nature of capitalism, he’s going to need to provide a more detailed rebuttal

The Independent [9] The significance of these errors is that it weakens Piketty’s claim that there has been a trend to greater inequality since 1980 in all rich countries. It is true of the US, but not, as is now clear, of those European countries cited in Piketty’s book.

The ultra-right-wing Mother Jones [10] The fundamental problem here is that the difficulties of measuring wealth are profound enough that it's always going to be possible to deploy different statistical treatments to come to slightly different conclusions. There's just too much noise in the data. In any case, I'm not taking any sides on this. The data analysis is too arcane for a layman to assess. But it's worth keeping an eye on.

Spectator [11] What he has found – on the cover of today’s FT and in detail on a blog here – is shocking because the errors are so basic. And yet on this, Piketty has built a manifesto for all kinds of tax rises. It makes you wonder how his publisher, Harvard University Press, allowed such flaws to enter print.

Any sixthformer would know that you can’t average out results between a massive country and a tiny one. You need to produce a “weighted average,” a concept with which a GCSE maths student ought to be familiar, let alone an economics professor. Average figures for any European metric (i.e., health spending as a share of GDP) need to take account for such population variations.

In basing his book on editorialised data, Piketty now looks like an economist who has been behaving like a journalist. He has been rumbled by a journalist, who has been behaving like an economist.

You may note I did not use anything near the "most damning" version of the story at all. Collect (talk) 21:47, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposal

How about we omit the dubious fraud/plagiarism allegations from CNBC/FT, and instead create a criticism section that notes the statistical errors and criticizes his methodology? Steeletrap (talk) 21:29, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Per BLP and NOTNEWS, the real answer is just to wait. The criticisms may be extremely serious, they may be quite serious or it may all be a storm in a teacup. Looking at all the sourcing, the last one of those looks more likely to me. But we are not really in a position to judge at the present time, and there really isn't a particularly pressing need to get as much criticism as possible into the article before the clock strikes twelve and we all turn into pumpkins. The claims will undoubtedly be thoroughly reviewed in multiple reliable sources in the near future. It won't hurt at all to wait for that. Formerip (talk) 21:46, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Did you see how many sources cover this? Guardian, Spectator, NYT, WSJ, and a couple hundred others? They appear to meet WP:RS to me on this. Cheers. Collect (talk) 21:47, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, they meet RS, but that is in no way the issue.

From attempts that have been made to add content on this to the article, it appears that it is difficult to do so in anything like a fair and proportionate manner. Maybe it will be easier once the dust has settled. The weight of the sourcing seems to suggest that the criticisms made could be trivial, and there's no deadline for us. Formerip (talk) 21:58, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Huh? The version removed was damn neutral, and included Piketty's response. What more can one ask for? It amounted to three lines - and trying to trim it down below three lines with the international coverage already generated would be a futile exercise. Kindly note my edits at Johann Hari where I took exactly the same position - and found folks pushing to make the direct charge of "plagiarism" in Wikipedia's voice which was wrong. Collect (talk) 22:12, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

I think my proposal should be suspended for now. We should wait and see how thins shake out, per WP:BLP and NOTNEWS. I'm surprised that a BLP defender such as Collect doesn't agree. Steeletrap (talk) 22:17, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

We can not make accusations of wrongdoing in Wikipedia's voice. That is what WP:BLP requires. But when we ignore the existence of a major controversy concerning use of statistics which has hit front pages, then we are dis-serving the reader. Which means we report the existence of the issue, and Piketty's response to it, in a short and neutral manner. I would absolutely oppose any use of Wikipedia to make a charge of anything remotely criminal in nature about a person, but in the case at hand, the existence of the charges has been in just about every major news and economics publication since the FT came out. Just like every single BLP out there. Collect (talk) 22:33, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

The "damn neutral" version that was removed in effect appears to indicate that experts have dismissed the premise of the book as a contrivance based on false data, with Pikkety admitting as much. That does not appear to accurately represent the balance of what the sources posted above say as a whole (as per FormerIP), nor can it be construed as a foregone conclusion.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 22:56, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Ubikwit, you have never edited this article nor this talk page before. Whatever disagreements there are about this particular issue, you're not part of them. In the very very very recent past you have had disputes with both myself and Collect. So this look very much like you jumping in, in yet another venue to fight your awesome MMPORG WP:BATTLEGROUND. Your participation is NOT appreciated. Go away. You're not helping things. While there's a disagreement here, the chances that it will get worked out in a calm, reasonable manner, are much smaller with you jumping in to get some kicks in against editors you don't like. Whether that be me or Collect. Quick causing drama. Did I mention WP:BATTLEGROUND already? Probably not enough.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:28, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

This is a content discussion VM, keep it civil.

The crux of the comment I left is that there don't appear to be clear allegations of "plagiarism", but more along the lines of falsification/manipulation of data, which are far from conclusive. Even though the allegation do not rise to plagiarism, were the assertions true, they would constitute academic misconduct.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 08:05, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I support Collect on this. The debate has become substantial enough to garner a large amount of attention and an official response from Piketty himself. We can add a few lines on the controversy as suggested above. The trick for this BLP article, however, is to link the controversy to his ideas in general, rather than the most recent book. There are a number of articles out there that are speaking of his larger intellectual project in this context, which we can draw on to provide readers with a credible summary in a NPOV. Archivingcontext (talk) 14:43, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

That sounds like a meta-proposal/response. Do you have any specific suggestions as to text or sources? I'm posting a couple of inks below relating to the recent work and follow up related thereto that has already been deleted out of the article, after have been there by @C.J. Griffin: here. It seems necessary to discuss the statements and sources that are repudiated in the edit summary of that revert, at any rate.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 15:34, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Picketty, Saez, Zucman

The sources cited in Picketty's reply to the FT have been claimed to be "unreliable" in a revert. It seems that the sources[12][13] should be considered reliable, but maybe that can be discussed here without going to a notice board first.

Further, in his reply, Picketty states

For instance, my US series have already been extended and improved by an important new research paper by Emmanuel Saez (Berkeley) and Gabriel Zucman (LSE). This work was done after my book was written, so unfortunately I could not use it for my book. Saez and Zucman use much more systematic data than I used in my book, especially for the recent period. Also their series are constructed using a completely different data source and methodology (namely, the capitalisation method using capital income flows and income statements by asset class)...
As you can see by yourself, their results confirm and reinforce my own findings: the rise in top wealth shares in the US in recent decades has been even larger than what I show in my book...
Finally, let me say that my estimates on wealth concentration do not fully take into account offshore wealth, and are likely to err on the low side. I am certainly not trying to make the picture look darker than it it. As I make clear in chapter 12 of my book (see in particular table 12.1-12.2), top wealth holders have apparently been rising a lot faster average wealth in recent decades, at least according to the wealth rankings published in magazines such as Forbes. This is true not only in the US, but also in Britain and at the global level (see attached table). This is not well taken into account by wealth surveys and official statistics, including the recent statistics that were published for Britain.Piketty response to FT data concerns

--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 15:34, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

It appears that saying in one sentence that the material has been "claimed" to be "unreliable" is a misuse of what the reliable sources actually state and then quoting Piketty at great length might violate NPOV as well. Best to state the issue briefly and his demurral - we are not here to either attack anyone, nor to ignore what has achieved major international coverage. FWIW, US pension funds now total about $21 trillion [14]. Total market cap of all US listed companies is under $19 trillion [15]. Total US household net worth is about $65 trillion or so [16] (no gain from 2006) making about 1/3 of all household assets being in pension funds. Collect (talk) 15:53, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting that the above passages should be quoted in full--if that is what you were referring to, just posting them for reference in relation to TP discussion.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 16:29, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

A whole lotta bullshit

Collect (and perhaps others) has been itching to add "serious allegations of fudging data", with Collect apparently believing it is sensible to do so because "the statements that Piketty used incorrect figures are admitted by Piketty at this point" -- indicating that Piketty admits he used dodgy data and thereby implying that his arguments about inequality are wrong. It's then worth noting that Piketty rejects that implication and considers the FT criticism "dishonest". (The final paragraph of that last link is especially interesting on that larger point.) So, this whole thing is textbook WP:NOTNEWS and forms an apparently much-needed object lesson for some editors re how to edit BLPs. One awaits signs of that lesson having been learned. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 14:10, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

First of all you should change your title as it will only invite more friction. Second, this is not a NOTNEWS issue. His work is receiving some significant questions regarding some of the math in his spreadsheets. Given the these issues question the basic premise of his book there is no reason not to make some mention of them. Also, WP:SUMMARY makes it clear that something should be mentioned because it is a main section in the primary article for the book. Arzel (talk) 14:34, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

The claims made by the FT and verified by the NYT and a host of other reliable sources (Economist, Spectator, Guardian, HuffPo, Reuters etc.) are not "bullshit". That sort of comment about editors is not impressing anyone at all, and seems more designed to be an attack on editors than a remotely serious attempt at improving the article. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:57, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

• Agree with Nomoskedasticity. Here is a substantial quote from the Guardian piece

  Scott Winship, an economist at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and notable critic of Piketty's analysis, said the FT's allegations weren't "significant for the fundamental question of whether Piketty's thesis is right or not". In an email to Bloomberg news agency, he wrote: "It's hard to think Piketty did something unethical when he put it up there for people like me to delve into his figures and find something that looks sketchy … Piketty has been as good or better than anyone at both making all his data available and documenting what he does generally."

  Trumped up allegations do not belong in the article.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 16:02, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

What trumped up allegations? Either Piketty did or did not make some mathematical errors in his book. From all accounts he did make some. The second part is whether they make a difference in his general thesis, of which there is disagreement. But to say that they don't exist or are made up, is simply not true and does not help the discussion. Arzel (talk) 18:32, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

That doesn't seem to be quite right. Giles does claim some straightforward errors, but there seems to be consensus among everyone else that if these actually are errors, they are inconsequential. The more serious allegations are not about errors but about "cherry picking of sources" and the fact that "some numbers appear simply to be constructed out of thin air", according to the text that was previously added to the article. I don't know about "trumped up", but there does seem to be a consensus in sources that these allegations are, at least, greatly overstated. Formerip (talk) 21:31, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

I am glad that the difference between 44% and 72% is "inconsequential." And your finding of a "consensus" is quite belied by the sources given. Cheers. Collect (talk) 21:36, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Collect, it's perfectly possible for numerically large errors to be inconsequential if they don't have a substantive effect on a result or a conclusion. But this is not an economics seminar, I'm only going off the sources. I haven't found a single source that says anything other than that the common-or-garden numerical errors alleged are unimportant. I also haven't found a source that has double-checked and is able to confirm that they are errors. Formerip (talk) 21:49, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

• A nuanced assessment of this issue is presented by the Economist: [17]. It reinforces the notion that Collect's edit was a BLP violation. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 22:34, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

The article cited has:

Second, the differences in the wealth-inequality figures are, with the exception of Britain, too minor to alter the picture.

That is - the example of Britain differences is not minor.

For America, the outcome of the analysis is relatively muddy (based in part on the fact that the source data themselves are harder to parse, according to Mr Giles).

That is - the material is "muddy" due to variances in the sourc data.

A broader point concerns whether an average of Britain, France, and Sweden should be represented as "Europe", but that of course is the way Mr Piketty presented the data in the first place.

All of which is in precise and complete accord with the NPOV edit I suggested. Right now we are Wiki-ostriches denying that any controversy exists, where the Economist clearly says one does exist. Cheers. Collect (talk) 00:18, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

But here we are not talking about Giles alleging straightforward errors. Giles alleges that Piketty actively card-sharked the data relating to wealth inequality in these examples. Which is why there is a BLP issue.

And you're being a bit selective in quoting the Economist article. The differences between the British data as presented by Piketty and as presented by Giles are, indeed, not minor. We hardly need the Economist to tell us that. But this is only really a problem for Piketty (other commentators suggest that it would not be much of one in any case) in the event that he is wrong and Giles is right, and the Economist most definitely does not say that. In fact, those qualified to comment across all sources have so far been broadly supportive of Piketty and critical of Giles. Which is why there is a serious NPOV issue with the edit you made. Formerip (talk) 00:48, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Nomo above was the one who brought up the Economist article. I did not "select" it in any way. Cheers. Collect (talk) 11:33, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm sure you just selected three short quotes from it. But, if not, my mistake. Formerip (talk) 11:38, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

That does not mean that they cannot be stated. Arzel (talk) 02:02, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to move it to the article on the book

Ok, in the past week or so the FT criticism has gotten a lot of attention, which means that whether it is correct or not it should probably be mentioned... somewhere. It's a little hard to make out exactly the nature of the purported mistakes (without replicating the analysis myself, which I don't have time for) which is why my preference would be to wait till this is hashed out in academic journals and publications. Recall that the Reinhart and Rogoff controversy, to which this has been compared, got recognition and became "notable" only once the critics published their findings in an actual journal article. AFAIK that hasn't happened here yet. It's a conversation in the "econ blogosphere". If I'm wrong, then please feel free to correct me on this point.

Assuming that I'm not, I do think that for WP:BLP reasons converge of this controversy belongs in the article on the Capital in the Twenty-First Century itself, not here.Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:24, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Considering the book is neither an academic journal or publication, there is no reason to wait for academic papers to point out that there were errors. There were errors, whether they change Piketty's main thesis is under debate, but there is no reason to not mention that they exist. Arzel (talk) 02:00, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Let's not go round in circles too much. AFAICT, there are only alleged errors at present, since no source has actually confirmed their existence. And there are also separate allegations of misconduct, which it is important not to mis-classify. On the possible or actual errors, the jury seems to have already returned a verdict of "meh", since even those who are critical or cautious of Piketty don't think they matter. So the errors don't seem important enough to mention in the bio article. Whether to mention the allegations of misconduct turns on how real/serious they are, but that's what's not clear.

We don't need to include all praise and all criticism of Piketty in the article, since that would make it unbalanced and a chore to read. We should include criticism that is particularly important to his life story. The difficulty in this case is that we are dealing with something whose noteworthiness in very unclear. Formerip (talk) 09:31, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually, not just "alleged" as Piketty has acknowledged transcription errors, and also acknowledged making alterations to smooth out curves. The issues are not of "existence" but of possible resultant changes to any findings of the book, and on that there seems some debate. And the data issue is now mentioned in a few hundred distinct reliable sources. Collect (talk) 11:31, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Do you have a source for Piketty acknowledging transcription errors? He has "acknowledged" adjusting data (he does this is the book), but that's just something economists do. It's not an admission of any error or wrongdoing. Formerip (talk) 11:53, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

In hard science, "adjusting data" is not accepted practice.

As I make clear in the book, in the on-line appendix, and in the many technical papers I have published on this topic, one needs to make a number of adjustments to the raw data sources so as to make them more homogenous over time and across countries. (response to FT) and (if there was anything to hide, any “fat finger problem”, why would I put everything on line?). ("fat finger" refers to simple transcription errors)

This is not well taken into account by wealth surveys and official statistics, including the recent statistics that were published for Britain. Of course, as I make clear in my book, wealth rankings published by magazines are far from being a perfectly reliable data source.

[18] shows the general hard science view of "adjusting data". In fact, had "adjusting data" been allowed in Physics, Relativity would not exist as a topic <g>. Collect (talk) 12:57, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

OK, so, in answer to my question, no Piketty hasn't acknowledged any errors or wrongdoing, then something about Relativity. Formerip (talk) 13:13, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

You could read what Piketty wrote - he says that "fat fingers" (transcription errors) are not a major problem in the book - he specifically allows that such transcription errors exist. And he asserts that changing figures is not "wrongdoing" but he definitely admits to changing the figures. Economics is not "hard science" perhaps - but such cavalier "smoothing" is what Physics and other hard sciences find a major problem. Collect (talk) 14:13, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

"Transcription errors" are not the same as "fudging data" (viz. your initial edit summary). "smoothing" is also not "fudging data". I'd suggest that you leave this issue to people who take BLP a bit more seriously; Wikipedia really ought to get it right. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 11:43, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

The edit did not use the term "fudging" and your faux umbrage is "tres amusant" here. Collect (talk) 12:57, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Piketty changed some of the data. How you wish to define that change is up to you. As Collect stated, changing of data in scientific research is a no-no. His smoothing of the data to make it easier to compare data across time and country should not have been done, period. Arzel (talk) 13:48, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

You've got a big job ahead of you -- convincing economists to do something different from what they've been doing for decades. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 13:51, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Strong claims require solid support

(I saw the following in the article about the book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, so I left a comment there, but I find the same sentence in this article, so I'll repeat the comment here. My suggestion is that this should only be discussed in one place. The book talk page section seems like the logical best place, but I note this page gets more page views, and seems more active, so it may happen here.)

The third sentence of the section about the book reads:

The book thus argues that unless capitalism is reformed, the very democratic order will be threatened.

I read the source:

Rather than simply revert and discuss, I thought I might be missing something, so I'm asking if someone else can see how the very strong claim the very democratic order will be threatened is supported by the source. I'll also suggest, that such a strong claim, unless supplemented by links to the original book, requires additional sourcing. --S Philbrick(Talk) 14:11, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

References