For those of us who only read the headline: this is debunking claims by economists and pointing out they’re building their theories on sand.
* some papers rely on McEvedy and Jones’ Atlas of World Population History data as the ground truth, when a lot of it is the best educated guess (sometimes the guess is based on basically almost nothing).
* the difference between the "guessed" population and the real population (which do not observe) is not random, which would lead not only to less precise results but also to bias.
I've taken a crack at revising the title, though not a very good crack - it's better to use language from the article itself and I didn't do that in this case. If anyone wants to comb through the article and find a representative phrase that would be more suitable, we'll happily edit it again.
Econ papers vary widely in quality. The lack of a quantifier could be taken to mean this is the new unrepresentative lab rats.
"Widely used historical population time series mostly guesswork" would be a more accurate title, though you might get a few "water is wet" replies :)
A better title:
Economist points out some economists had been using a dodgy source; cites other economists who had pointed this out adding to literature of checking citations and a growing body of literature on checking claims in economic history in particular [editorial: as these feed into pop science years down the road]
The Federal Reserve lies, and the economists continue to trust their every word.
My theory is that the deep state needs control of the currency, so they specifically put economists that teach the necessity of the Federal Reserve.
I highly recommend reading some of AE Housmann’s prose. He lays out a vision of _English Literature_ that intellectually rigorous.