The American Spectator

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A Dark Day for Times Blogs Editors

By Joseph Lawler on 10.19.09 @ 12:07PM

It's always a bad situation when one academic point-blank accuses another of something like "one statement per page that's either flatly untrue or deeply misleading."

And it's even worse when this accusation is repeated directly after the accused academic provided quite a bit of exculpatory evidence, and called the accusation a "smear." 

But the worst is when the two academics are writing for the same newspaper. And in this case it's the New York Times, with Paul Krugman going after Steve Levitt for the global warming chapter in Superfreakonomics.

Something is wrong here. They can't both be right; one or the other must have seriously misrepresented someone's views. I'm guessing that the Times usually holds its columnists to a higher standard. But I'd hate to be the editor tasked with sorting this one out.