"Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, commissioned a survey of over 500 economists to find out which candidate for President of the United States would be best for the economy long term."
Ya, I agree. What I found intriguing was the emergence of privately funded political research. Celebrities are notorious for throwing in their own two cents, but here, theoretically, is a less subjective means for them to contribute. Unfortunately with the study Adams conducted, that research was rather disappointing and still gained a good deal of media coverage. I was unaware of his other wacky ideas. I had read "God's Debris" which I found poetically interesting but factually void. It did, however, begin with a disclaimer that he wasn't presenting truths but rather a series of thought experiments.
Every "serious" thing Scott Adams has ever written makes perfect sense in light of this cartoon:
To start with, the word "economist" isn't really appropriate. It implies a special knowledge or expertise in economics, when all we actually know about these people is that they are members of the American Economic Association. For $65/year, you could be too. Their membership application lists no requirements for membership other than paying the fee. So we can guess that they are at least interested in economics, but calling them economists is a stretch. I read Science News but that doesn't make me a scientist.
Looking at the numbers, I don't see any trend that couldn't be explained by the fact that the group surveyed is 86% male and 65% academics.
Adams must be a great businessman to have turned a mediocre comic strip into a sprawling commercial empire, but he's hardly a reliable source for any kind of analysis. I read "The Dilbert Future" back in the day, and there are a couple of chapters in it where he goes off about his bizarre ideas about spacetime, quantum mechanics, alternate universes, etc., all of which are based on complete misunderstandings of actual scientific theories and experiments. This article goes into some detail about Adams's lunacy. And here is a post from his blog in which he famously bungles through the Monte Hall problem, using it as evidence to conclude that "your world is either partly created by your mind, or you are a hologram created by some other mind, and there are a few bugs in the software."
He's wrong about so many things in so many ways that it's almost hard to believe he's for real. In fact I strongly suspect that he's aware it's all bullshit and is just pandering to idiots to sell more books. Either that or he has a dog-eared copy of "The Secret" on his desk.
It is amazing to me that CNN would run a non-humor article by him as though it is coming from a person who is not crazy.