Megan McArdle offered up a long blog post criticizing Elizabeth Warren's scholarship. This prompted liberal economics blogger Mike Konczal to respond, inter alia, that:
Given that Warren is considered “the leading authority in the country on bankruptcy law,” being called a hack by McArdle, of all people, is something.
If you follow Konczal's link, you'll discover that the authority he cites is an unattributed publisher's blurb for one of Warren's books. It's pure PR puffery. Not evidence.
Is Liz Warren the leading authority in the country on bankruptcy? No. If you take citations as the best metric, she's way behind Bob Scott in Brian Leiter's latest survey.
Is Liz Warren a leading authority? Sure. By Leiter's count, she's tied for third.
But citing an anonymous PR blurb for even that more modest proposition would be just stupid.
