U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog: Leading bankruptcy scholar's testimony called "junk social science"

Whoa! Todd Zywicki of George Mason University Law School and a co-author, Professor Gail Heriot of San Diego Law, take a fairly weak, and certainly cheap ("junk," "long-discredited" and "one of the most misleading pieces of research ever placed before Congress -- no small dishonor") shot at two leading scholars in an opinion-editorial called Junk social science index that appears in today's Washington Times. The op-ed attacks recent testimony on bankruptcy and medical debt by Professor Elizabeth Warren (testimony) of Harvard Law School and Professor David Himmelstein, M.D. of Harvard Medical School, based on research they'd done together.

Professor Bob Lawless has a rebuttal posted on the Credit Slips blog he, Professor Warren and others write. And over at her personal blog, Professor Warren comments. Zywicki's a long-time apologist for the draconian industry-backed 2005 bankruptcy law, and so his own testimony's views are to be expected, so why pile-on with the cheap, unscholarly op-ed? Could the industry-funded Mercatus Center at GMU need a press clip for its next grant proposal? And in her own blog, The Right Coast, Professor Heriot complains that through a "cheap trick," Zywicki didn't get to speak last. Dang!

This page at Sourcewatch explains the birth of the industry funded campaign to attack pro-consumer, pro-health and safety research as "junk science." Its parents? The tobacco industry.