Thursday, January 14, 2010

Economists are wrong: well Google says so...

Some of you will have seen Dan Ariely's post on what google searches can reveal : very clever.
http://www.predictablyirrational.com/?page_id=17

Rather than pursuing the romantic angle, I put into Google "Economists are"
The three 3 top results are:
economists are split on inflation 907,000 results
economists are useless 793,000 "
economists are wrong 3,740,000 "

So there you have it. Most people think we are wrong. I'll get my coat.

16 comments:

Stephen Kinsella said...

You mean get your cloak, Kevin :)

Kevin Denny said...

as in cloak & dagger?

Peter Carney said...

Kevin, put the dagger down and try "i would give my right arm "

Kevin Denny said...

"..to be ambidextrous"? Yeah thats an old one. I think I may have given a seminar with the title. Wen Zhang and I have shown in recent work that the ambidextrous behave better & I have shown there are also some cognitive advantages in a Neuropsychologia paper a couple of years back.

Rob Gillanders said...

It could be worse - try "political science is"

Anonymous said...

Here's some consolation: just put "economics" into the search. A number of results appear such as economics notes, economics help, economics definitions etc. Only one institution appears: "economics ucd", with 669,000 results. Type in "economics tcd" and Google asks "did you mean economics ucd?". :)

Kevin Denny said...

Excellent! LMAO

Mark McGovern said...

I think that deserves a news spot on ucd.ie Martin!

There are
websites
devoted just to this.

Peter Carney said...

Excellent Martin!

The wit and wisdom of Google

Liam Delaney said...

I think the fact that economics ucd appears is due to google engine being tailored to the ip address of the country.

the fact that 'did you mean economics ucd" appears is fantastic.

Liam Delaney said...

Rob, Sociology doesn't come out too well either ("Sociology is....). It looks like people seek information to prove that Economists are wrong, that they seek information to prove that Sociology is basically bullshit and that they dont seek any information specifically about political scientists.

Kevin Denny said...

Psychology doesn't do too bad

Liam Delaney said...

try "psychologists are"

Rob Gillanders said...

And the winner for most hated science on the internet is... evolution (shocker). Try "evolution is"

Ronan L said...

Slight side point, but relevant because of the current discussion on Google/China, etc. Try the various religions:
Christianity is...
Judaism is...
Buddhism is...

For them all you get a list of the worst sort of criticisms a religion can imagine. (Don't tell the Gardai, though, you could be done for blasphemy, I'm sure.)

Now try Islam is.
Intersting, n'est-ce pas?

Kevin Denny said...

Ronan: curiouser & curiouser...