(PNS reporting from LOS ANGELES) Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, authors of the mathematically-challenged Growth in a Time of Debt pro-“austerity” study, and Jason Richwine, the Heritage Foundation researcher who claimed Hispanics have lower IQs, are the recipients of the 2013 Carlos Castaneda Award for Academic Bullshit, it was announced today.
The prize is named for the Peruvian-born UCLA anthropologist and cult leader who wrote several best-selling books about a Yaqui brujo that were marketed as truth but turned out to be bullshit. It’s presented annually to “those academic authors who manage to fool some of the people some of the time.”
The award, which features a $19.99 monthly stipend and a year’s supply of vegetarian “sausage” for the winners, is a community project of the Soyrizo Foundation of Los Angeles, which is “dedicated to recognizing and celebrating phony-ass shit wherever we find it, with a spicy Latin flair,” executive vice president Penn O. Kehoe said in a foundation press release.
“Look, it’s no Pulitzer, I can dig that,” Richwine wrote PNS in an email, “but I’ll take what I can get; I’m out of of work, dude. And $20 a month can help me with my Takis budget.”
Economists Reinhart and Rogoff — whose widely-quoted study urging governments to practice “austerity” to grow their economies contained an elementary Excel spreadsheet error invalidating their conclusions — were traveling abroad and could not be contacted. But their GOP supporters, like Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Paul Ryan, were angry.
“By all that is sacred and the Aqua Buddah himself,” Tea Party favorite Paul told PNS. “When the East Coast Ivy League academic elite mock someone, you know who’s right!”
Paul shrugged off objections that UCLA was on the West Coast and not a member of the Ivy League:
You liberals sure know how to twist words, don’t you? I was for UCLA before I was against it.
Defeated vice presidential candidate Ryan told PNS that “anal-retentive Excel spreadsheet critics” are as much “of the devil” as abortion providers, and said the award “rips a viable fetus” from the “loving, living confines of a mother’s womb.”
“I’m sure the NSA was involved in this, the baby killers, the global warmers and the gun-grabbers, all of them,” he said.
“Repeal Obamacare,” he added.