The Reinhart and Rogoff paper was more like factoid of a theory - no complicated model, just a dubious claim that trips off the tongue - "Studies have shown that when debt reach X level, growth tanks"

The thing about this is when the shoddy quality of the study became obvious, people could act that was what drove all the horrible things coming under austerity, as if these weren't the consensus of a large group, study-or-not-study.

Still the main responsability sits on the economists and their peers.

I mean, not that I want in any way to absolve the politicians, mind you, but what can they do - not being economists or more generally technically experts in this or that field - if not choosing the theories from people qualified by notorious universities?

In my experience what matters in this is reputation (and network), which in itself is not "bad" in an absolute sense, but I see a lot of sloppy or downright "wrong" works (even if rarely with such severe consequences) coming from these people lately.

It seems to me like there are not (or not enough) critical reviews/checkings/etc. in some (scientific or pseudo-scientific) circles.