<p>jimbob – I never asserted Freakonomics was an erudite treatise on economics. I’m a (baby) economist and I read real economics papers on most days. Freakonomics is, and is intended to be, a popular book to excite a mass audience about the ideas, techniques, and spirit of economic analysis. To read and/or evaluate it in the same frame of mind as you would read and evaluate a Nature paper or a philosophical text is to (a) completely miss the point (b) deprive yourself of significant pleasure.</p>
<p>This is an very mildly related tirade, but I get quite annoyed when scientific or well-educated people read a book like Freakonomics or The Tipping Point and quibble about imprecision or lack of scientific rigor. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume that this is just a lame attempt to show off how sophisticated the critic supposedly is.</p>
<p>I know lots of real, very accomplished, famous scientists who get giddy with excitement when they read something like Freakonomics or The Tipping Point. They know it’s flashy and stylized, but they are smart enough to wake up the excitable kid inside, who doesn’t quibble – who is capable of awe at the broad, fundamental insights and who can appreciate their potential (including the real scientific potential). Especially when you consider that there is no good, overarching theory to explain the things those books are about, and so the best we can do for now is to sketch the broad outlines and get enough young scientists excited, so they can actually construct the precise theory the complainers think is lacking.</p>
<p>Anyway, I think reading Freakonomics and complaining that its arguments aren’t tight or precise enough is like reading a novel and complaining that it’s false. Different books for different purposes. Learn to appreciate what the thing is meant to be.</p>