I read the FT article when it appeared. What seemed remarkable was that, even though it took Piketty years to compile and work with the data, it took the FT editor weeks to come up with a rebuttal [1]. That by itself should tell you something.
[1]Unless he read the original French version from last year, but that's doubtful because the book became popular (and therefore dangerous to the upper class) only after being translated to English.
And the list of those supposed mistakes is public[1], behind only a registration wall. Piketty either made them, or not. They either substantially change the results, or not. You don't need to make guesses based on timing.
Perhaps Chris Giles is motivated by pleasing his "wealthy businessmen" audience. Perhaps he spent sleepless nights pouring over the text to find something, anything. Maybe he even cheats on his wife.
But so what?
[1] http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2014/05/23/data-problems-wi...
OTOH, it is equally fallacious to suggest that Giles' cheating on his wife is as irrelevant as his ideology or that of his employers.
At this point, we don't know who has it right. But, it is not unwise to look suspiciously upon a person's ideology and/or leanings when approaching their work. This is especially so in today's world of corporate-owned media.
This does not lend credibility to whatever argument it is that you are trying to make.
>>I read the FT article when it appeared. What seemed remarkable was that, even though it took Piketty years to compile and work with the data, it took the FT editor weeks to come up with a rebuttal [1]. That by itself should tell you something.
This is an absurd and daft point. It is obvious that the process of compiling data and producing a book presents a more time-consuming task than working with the same data, already compiled, in order to complete not a book, but a newspaper article.
As a corollary to your statement it is further worth noting that The Economist also bring up scholarly defense of Piketty's data:
"Scott Winship, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute who disputes Mr Piketty's overarching narrative about inequality wrote on Twitter last night: I’ve spent time with Piketty U.S. wealth ineq[uality] spreadsheet and LOTS of time with his income data. He's not up to funny business."
As made apparent, your passive-aggressive political proselytizing does not offer a constructive contribution to this submission. Please understand this.
I've seen a lot of bogus stuff put out over the decades that's taken very little time to debunk. With the availability of info on the net, plus of course in this case the FT having significant internal resources, the timeline is hardly out of the question.
Note that nominally honest researchers are well known to make mistakes that follow their prejudices, I saw a lot of this in the '80s arguments against ballistic missile defense. They compute a result, but don't subject it to the critical analysis they would of something that goes against the grain, and don't give political opponents a chance to double check their work. And then e.g. end up publishing a series of articles in Scientific American that successively have fewer and fewer claims about how it's "impossible".
But if you listen, there was no "this was poor because it was in ft". It was more like
Person1: "that seemed like a poor piece" Person2: "It's not surprising it was poor, ft is often biased"
No one claimed that appearing in ft proved anything.
You could just as easily dismiss Piketty: Oh, he's just some French lefty (cheese eating...), of course he'll conclude that inequality is the problem and we need to tax wealth.