Financial Times: Piketty Didnt Make a Mistake, He Manipulated Data

Writing at Business Insider, Rob Wile details how the Financial Times’ criticism of anti-capitalism economist Thomas Picketty isn’t that he misinterpreted economic data in his book Capitalism in the 21st Century, but that he intentionally manipulated the numbers to support his claims:

Financial Times economics editor Chris Giles says French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-selling “Capitalism in the 21st Century,” about rising inequality in the West, contains serious errors that undermine his conclusion that wealth distributions are widening.

Giles says there are clear examples of some “fat finger” mistranscriptions and compares the situation to omissions found in Reinhart’s and Rogoff’s data on debt levels and growth.

But while the two Harvard professors’ errors seemed to have been unintended, Giles levels a more serious critique: that Piketty actively manipulated his data.

Read the rest of the story at Business Insider.