A Real Pot/Kettle Situation

Alex Tabarrok over at Marginal Revolution points out that Diane Coyle has listed Freakonomics as one of the most overrated books of the year. The list appeared in a British magazine called Prospect. Here’s what Coyle had to say about Freakonomics: “Economics as freak show. Depressingly, this seems to be the only way to gain a wider audience for the empress of the social sciences, other than multinational bashing.”

Fair enough.

But the funny thing, as Tabarrok points out, is that Coyle is an economist herself who in 2004 published a book called Sex, Drugs and Economics: An Unconventional Intro to Economics.

I guess what they say is true: it takes a freak show to know a freak show. Regardless, I do quite like that Coyle calls economics “the empress of the social sciences.”