[lmg643]

I think having data open and available is good for everyone.

The more I learn about this particular incident, the more I feel the scandal is not (a) that famous harvard professors made a mistake, or (b) that microsoft excel is more error prone than alternatives (which seems like nonsense to me because the more complex the replacement the more error prone it will be)...

To me the scandal is that you can be a tenured professor in economics and produce work that amounts to simple averages of widely available data and call it a research paper, and that people take you seriously, and presidential candidates use you as a reference, and your department doesn't bat an eyelash.

The fact that they screwed up seems incidental - mistakes happen.

It seems like the kind of back-of-the envelope work that any old blogger would be capable of doing, we just don't have a way to take good ideas, no matter where they come from, seriously. no matter how much we profess to try - at heart, the consensus is still status-driven, and pedigrees matter.

[vacri]

I think having data open and available is good for everyone.

Not necessarily everyone. Collecting good data is hard, long, and tedious, and the 'glory' part is the analysis. People get accolades for making analyses, not for good groundwork.