Better to Be Wrong in a Herd than Independently Right

A number of exasperated commentators (Digby and Glenn Greenwald are two prominent ones who come immediately to mind) regularly blast the Washington establishment and the major media for continuing to publish the opinions and analysis of pundits who have proven rarely, if ever, to be correct. Yves Smith explores the economic side of this phenomenon in a post that discusses the spectacular failure of most economists to foresee this, the second worst economic downtown in the past eighty years, and the absence of accountability for this failure. Shockingly, many of the very economists who were so utterly wrong continue to guide and shape economic policy. Yves' analogy:

But if a doctor repeatedly deemed patients to be healthy that were soon found to have Stage Four cancer that was at least six years in the making, the doctor would be a likely candidate for a malpractice suit. Yet we have heard nary a peep about the almost willful blindiness of economists to the crisis-in-its-making, with the result that their central role in policy development remains beyond question.