Cui bono is always a good question to ask and even more so in academia where it is never even suggested. The exchange of money for professorships and the agenda behind the contribution and the professors ideology would make a fascinating study.

I agree with Sam, Dr. White. If your story changes as the source of your paycheck changes, then it is fair for others to ask questions about that and speculate as they will. It isn't proper to ask these questions, I know... I know, but as you alluded to, Dr. Salerno's article was not just character-smearing hit piece. Moreover, the dirty work of asking tough questions should have been done by the author of the book (i.e., Doherty).

Gosh Larry, I just cited your great article on how money and banking economists are influenced by the purse strings of the Fed. True, economic theory should not be judged by motive, but motive can be judged by money, can't it?

Gosh Larry, I just cited your great article on how money and banking economists are influenced by the purse strings of the Fed. True, economic theory should not be judged by motive, but motive can be judged by money, can't it?

I agree with with the sentence in Professor White's post that reads: "There is no one dominant point of view among current Austrians about how best to go about doing economics" but am confused by the statement immediately following it: "or about where others may have pursued the wrong approach."

It must be remembered and continually emphasized that Austrian economics is primarily a methodology, or a way of theoretically thinking of, and practicing, economics. There are of course core ideas that define this particular perspective, but there is no Austrian orthodoxy. No aspiring Austrian economist need conform to certain standards or views in order to be welcomed into the camp. Each thinker classified as an Austrian wrote from his perspective alone, and to suggest otherwise would be to force an understanding of their writings as something that represents other people, or an ideology, which implies a level of uniformity within Austrian economics that simply does not exist. For me personally, I am not interested in speaking on anyone's behalf; I speak for myself.

Now to the second part of the quoted passage. To recognize that there exists no an Austrian orthodoxy does not prevent us from pointing out errors others have made in their research. Indeed, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out years ago, true scientific progress can occur only in an environment in which there is passionate and vigorous debate over fundamentals.

Many young Austrians (especially the students of Boettke at GMU) seem to believe that the best way to pursue economics is to apply a common Austrian tool kit to current problems in hopes of finding an "Austrian" solution. This is entirely wrong-headed. No fresh and new discoveries can be made in science when the methods of investigation are already spelled out. Such an approach would lead to nothing more than "mopping up activities" or "puzzle solving activities" where the solution is already anticipated in advance. As Caldwell described it, such an approch "does not seek to produce novelties" because the rules have already been clearly specified. We always want to be alert to certain anomalies which can potentially switch, change or even subvert the existing paradigm. Of course such attempts will be resisted and there will ensue a bitter debate over the fundamentals of methodological perspectives. But this is what should be happening. We ought to desire a proliferation of competing views at all times.

I congratulate Joe Salerno for his constant criticism on any Austrian who is not associated with the Mises Institute. I disapprove of the attempts by everyone else to question the appropriateness of these criticisms. Critical dialogue is the most effective way to advance any methodology.

I am delighted that Larry White took notice of my review on his blog and appreciate his thoughtful comments. I am in profound agreement with his
statement, "There is no one dominant point of view among current Austrians about how best to go about doing economics, or about where others may have pursued the wrong approach." He believes that the failure to recognize this point is one of the most important shortcomings of the Doherty book. Indeed I echoed this point in an exchange of emails with Pete Boettke yesterday.
Quoting from my own email:

"Note that I acknowledged that your points were
probably made in the context of an informal oral interview and that you likely had no idea how they would be used. Still since you were the only
person whose views on the development of the Austrian movement Brian decided to present--and to do so as established fact with absolutely no
critical analysis--I naturally focused on a
point by point rebuttal of your position. Had Brian consulted a number of other Austrian economists and given an even-handed presentation of conflicting views, I would not have proceeded in this way and probably would never have even written the review. I realize that there are possibly as many interpretations of the development of the modern Austrian movement
as there are Austrian economists, so I was not singling you out just because your view differed from mine. But Brian never gave his readers even a hint of the diversity of opinion on this important question among Austrian economists."

I do however have two objections to White's second comment, regarding my alleged suggestion "that a change in Boettke's perspective has been driven by the changing agenda of his department?s chief soft-money
source."

White completely misses the point of the second part of my review. I never suggested such a thing. I only used the information presented by Doherty himself to demonstrate that this was a reasonable inference from the facts and statements he presented but failed to analyze. As I wrote in an email to Pete yesterday, performing this exercise of rational reconstruction of
the development of the GMU program "was part of an immanent criticism trying to exemplify Doherty's complete lack of interpretive analysis.
Doherty himself presented all the info in the text that was needed to allow a reasonably informed reader to infer that this was indeed the case [that pecuniary incentives strongly shaped the research agenda at GMU] My interpretation is not based on any info from outside the text." Since I previously had criticized Doherty's investigative skills and ability to connect and assimilate his facts, I clearly remained agnostic on the accuracy of this interpretation.

I might also note that before I prsented this immanent critique, I carefully engaged every one of Boettke's arguments in greater detail than
he stated them. So I am truly baffled by White's rhetorical question: "Does Salerno want a reader of his review to judge the argument on its merits, or does he want the reader to feel compelled to ask: who's supporting Salerno, and what's their agenda?"

My second objection to White's negative comment is his contention that any suggestion that an academic opponent's labor supply curve is upward-sloping is beyond the pale ("That?s a low blow for an academic journal review.") The denial that "filthy lucre" enters the value scales of economists in making their research decisions is indeed a strange position for White or any economist to take and has long nettled me. In the mid 1990s, I refereed an edited volume of articles on how individual economists went
about their research, how they worked and what advice they had for aspiring research economists. The articles were written by rising stars in the
profession. In one of the papers I refereed the author, a now very famous economist, advised other economists to "spend the time to make every
article as perfect as possible." I suggested that he revise his statement because it was inconsistent with the doctrine of opportunity cost. What if spending the extra time to perfect one article that was already publishable
cost the author an opportunity to write and publish a second article in an equal or higher ranked journal, I asked. The editor told me that the author bristled at my suggestion and refused to make the revision.

Lastly, White refers to Boettke's response to me as a "model of scholarly decorum," and I readily admit it was temperate in tone and respectful.
Unfortunately it did not engage any of the substantive points I made in my review, which is also an important attribute of scholarship and the very rationale of academic discourse.