 |
| Terminologist and Economist: Paul Krugman at the 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
“Incestuous Amplification.” What a wonderful phrase, which Paul Krugman describes as “a term for how highly dubious ideas become not just accepted, but viewed as certainties. “Incestuous amplification” happen when a closed group of people repeat the same things to each other – and when accepting the group’s preconceptions itself becomes a necessary ticket to being in the in-group.”
Krugman is talking about his fellow economists, but this concept also works with other small or closed groups, and that includes scholars in a given discipline.
