 What solution does Paul Krugman suggest to address his concerns?
I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record. 1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government"--is "pure fiction." (As Krugman notes, one reason for this was technical, not ideological. 3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. Krugman apart, virtually every economist I have spoken to, including Daniel Rubinfeld, a former Berkeley professor who is now the chief economist at the Justice Department's antitrust division, told me this was the case. 4) Krugman appears to suggest that I made up some quotes, a charge that, if it came from a more objective source, I would consider to be a serious matter. After Krugman's article appeared, the Santa Fe professor called me to say that he still recalled the meetings in question as I described them. Krugman, as he admits, wasn't present at either of the meetings. 5) For a man who takes his own cogitations extremely seriously, Krugman is remarkably cavalier about attributing motives and beliefs to others. To claim, as Krugman does, that I "don't like mainstream economists" and that I am out to denigrate their work is malicious hogwash.
 Journalists and authors should show more care in referencing and crediting work done by all parties.
 Journalists and authors should rely on only a handful of trusted sources.  Journalists and authors should show more care in referencing and crediting work done by all parties.  Journalists and authors should always fact-check information through Nobel laureates.  More media attention should be given to issues of academic plagiarism.