There's an excellent article($) by Noam Scheiber in this week's New Republic about how the Freakonomics ethic of cleverness is ruining the economics profession. As someone who loved the book, it gave me a whole new perspective on things. Plus, there's an edu-connection, as Scheiber explains how well-known education articles by Alan Krueger and Caroline Hoxby have given rise to a generation of young economists trying to get ahead professionally by finding every-more obscure instances of "clean identification" to answer increasingly trivial questions.
The article also has the funniest chart footnote I've read in a while (admittedly, the bar isn't high): "Standard errors available upon request."
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