Is there a more pompous douchebag than Kranky Kruggers?

Via Paul Krugman:

Timothy Egan joins the chorus of those dismayed by Nate Silver’s new FiveThirtyEight. I’m sorry, but I have to agree: so far it looks like something between a disappointment and a disaster.

But I’d argue that many of the critics are getting the problem wrong. It’s not the reliance on data; numbers can be good, and can even be revelatory. But data never tell a story on their own. They need to be viewed through the lens of some kind of model, and it’s very important to do your best to get a good model. And that usually means turning to experts in whatever field you’re addressing.

Unfortunately, Silver seems to have taken the wrong lesson from his election-forecasting success. In that case, he pitted his statistical approach against campaign-narrative pundits, who turned out to know approximately nothing. What he seems to have concluded is that there are no experts anywhere, that a smart data analyst can and should ignore all that.

But not all fields are like that — in fact, even political analysis isn’t like that, if you talk to political scientists instead of political reporters. So, for example, before glancing at some correlation and asserting causation, you really should talk to the researchers.

Did I ever tell you how much I hate Paul Krugman?