Arrgh. It’s enough to make one suspect left-wing media bias on the part of the NY Times. The story by Patricia Cohen opens:

For many economists, questioning free-market orthodoxy is akin to expressing a belief in intelligent design at a Darwin convention: Those who doubt the naturally beneficial workings of the market are considered either deluded or crazy.

But in recent months, economists have engaged in an impassioned debate over the way their specialty is taught in universities around the country, and practiced in Washington, questioning the profession’s most cherished ideas about not interfering in the economy.

But none of this is true (except for the statement that economists have been debating). Here is how Daniel Klein and Charlotta Stern summarize the results of conducting an actual survey (rather than relying on highly selective anecdotes like Cohen does),

We find that about 8 percent of AEA members can be considered supporters of free-market principles, and that less than 3 percent may be called strong supporters. The data is broken down by voting behavior (Democratic or Republican). Even the average Republican AEA member is “middle-of-the-road,” not free-market.

So in fact, for better or worse, questioning free-market policies is very mainstream. Those who “doubt the naturally beneficial workings of the market” are not ipso facto considered deluded or crazy. The reverse is closer to the truth. Ideas “about not interfering in the economy” – later in Cohen’s articles such ideas are identified with Milton Friedman -- are not the profession's "most cherished ideas". (Much less are they practiced in Washington!)

So what is Cohen’s anecdotal evidence that criticism of the free market renders one an “apostate” (Blinder’s term)? (1) Alan Blinder is sore about the criticism he has received over his claim that outsourcing and trade may result in a loss of 30 to 40 million American jobs. (2) David Card is sore about the criticism he has received (and pointed questions his students have gotten on the job market) over his much-debated finding (with Alan Kreuger) that a hike in the minimum wage didn’t cost jobs in the New Jersey fast-food industry (described fawningly by Cohen as “groundbreaking research on the effect of the minimum wage”). Sorry, soreheads, but that’s no evidence that free-market ideology rules the roost. Everybody’s claims get criticized. Ask any free-market economist if he or she receives criticism.

Finally, Cohen notes that

In addition to Mr. Blinder, other eminent economists like Lawrence H. Summers and the Nobel Prize-winner George A. Akerlof have pointed out what they see as the failings of laissez-faire economics.

So this is evidence for the proposition that critics of the free market are treated like apostates? That the critics of the free market include Blinder, a Princeton professor and former Federal Reserve governor, Summers, a Harvard professor and former Treasury Secretary, and Akerlof, a Nobel laureate? Seems to me like evidence against that proposition.