Advice from Gelman & Fung, in AmSci piece on Freakonomics shortcomings

Good advice for all of us (yes, including me) -

"It is easy to be preemptively defensive of one’s own work, or of researchers whose work one has covered. Viewing alternative points of view as useful rather than threatening can help take the sting out of critiques. And if you’re covering subject matter outside your expertise, it pays to get second—and third and fourth—opinions."

- from Freakonomics: What Went Wrong? Examination of a very popular popular-statistics series reveals avoidable errors