Piketty blitz. Economie Hétérodoxe. .Eco Socio Thinkers. What the Piketty-Financial Times Affair says about journalism and academia. Thomas Piketty has issued a response to the FT’s criticism claiming that bad computations and flawed estimates undermined the overall thesis of his book, namely that wealth concentration had increased.
I have read the 10-page letter by Piketty and found it extremely convincing. Basically, he doesn’t give an inch, explaining each and every point that the FT raised with references either to the very dataset that the FT used, or to research papers he had published and uploaded. He concedes that a few minor points could have been more transparent in the dataset, but if anything, his response points more to the FT’s sloppiness than his own, as does another piece in the Guardian by Howard Reed. When you write a 600-page book drawing on a humongous mass of disparate data, you are bound to make thousands of judgement calls and adjustments. Pierre Bourdieu.
Socio: constructivisme structuraliste. Organisations journals etc; Théorie de la décision. Kahneman & Tversky. Littérature&langue. Société Culture Politique Art. Histoire : le Collège de France vire à gauche. Il s’est passé quelque chose jeudi soir au Collège de France.
L’historien Patrick Boucheron, 50 ans, spécialiste des cités italiennes au Moyen-Age et récemment élu au sein de la plus prestigieuse institution de l’université française, n’a pas seulement prononcé sa leçon inaugurale. Il a secoué le petit milieu des historiens français, engoncé depuis trop longtemps dans le conformisme et la crainte de s’engager. Une demi-heure avant la séance, l’amphithéâtre Marguerite de Navarre était plein à craquer, sauf les trois premiers rangs.