This is not intended to be a rhetorical question and is borne out of last week's news that an economic model which has been used as the basis for deficit reduction has been shown to have been based on spurious data and calculations.
This model, based on the work of Harvard Professors Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Roghoff (who used to be the Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund), was believed to demonstrate that once public debt exceeds 90% of GDP any growth slows down dramatically.
For those who wish to impose austerity as the justification for cutting public expenditure Reinhart and Roghoff's research was academic validation. Who could argue with a model that was based on sound logic and valid data.
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In their 2009 book This Time It's Different (published by Princeton University Press) drew upon extensive historical research to prove the fallacy of increased borrowing.
In particular Reinhart and Roghoff used two centuries of public-debt data from sixty six countries to demonstrate that up to the point where debt reaches 90% of GDP there is no discernible impact of growth but that after this it shrinks very dramatically.
Significantly Reinhart and Roghoff explained in their book that their research showed that over the period 1790 to 2009 the reduction in growth is from an average of 3% to 1.7% but that only post-war data is used the reduction in economic growth is even more dramatic; from 3% to -0.1%.
Their book was seminal and endorsed by many other eminent economists who gushingly wrote in admiration of the basis of Reinhart and Roghoff's thesis that all previous crises were very different and because 'this time it is different' radical action is required to reduce debt in order to save economies from even worse consequences.
In January 2010 at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association Reinhart and Roghoff presented a follow paper titled 'Growth in Time of Debt' which was supposedly based on twenty countries and only on data from after the second world war which re-emphasised the message that excessive public debt causes a decline in growth.
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For right wingers in America, this message was seen as a great way to condemn the policies of President Obama. Despite the evidence to the contrary, they argued that his economic policies based on Keynesian investment were completely wrong.
Obama's belief in investment in US manufacturing and infrastructure allied to better education for all children and a more pragmatic immigration system was condemned as socialism (and worse).
However, the fact that there has been almost three years of consecutive growth and job creation resulting in over 6 million vacancies being created would not matter. The critics would point to the academic research carried out by Reinhart and Roghoff as the warning of what was likely to eventually occur.
The trouble is, the work carried out by Reinhart and Roghoff has been found to be incorrect.
As has been widely reported in the last week, two professors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin had set their students the task of reviewing an academic paper and were encouraged to try and use the methodology to attempt to operationalise whatever model they contained.
When Thomas Herndon selected 'Growth in a Time of Debt' he could hardly have imagined that his inability to produce the same results as its authors would lead to it being debunked for having excluded five of the countries with high public debt that Reinhart and Roghoff had claimed to have based their research on; Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada and Denmark.
Herndon could not replicate the original results and with his tutors Ash and Polllin became frustrated. Sensibly they asked the authors of this paper, Reinhart and Roghoff, to provide the student with the actual spreadsheet that had been used to produce their findings.
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As well Herndon discovering the omission of the five countries, Ash and Pollin also found that data for some countries was omitted which skewed the results.
Additionally the way that averaging was carried out placed more emphasis on some countries than others. For instance, in the case of New Zealand one year (1951) was used which had a growth of -8% and given the same weighting as the 海角视频's twenty years of high debt when achieving 2.5% growth.
To be fair, the reworking that has been carried out by Herndon, Ash and Pollin, which they have published as a draft paper, shows that high levels of debt still undermine potential growth but that the relationship is not as strongly correlated as suggested by Reinhart and Roghoff.
Unsurprisingly there has been much opprobrium heaped on economic theory in general and the work of Reinhart and Rogoff in particular: For example, writing in The Guardian last week, Heidi Moore stated that what this shows is that we place too much trust in economic theory and that whilst it is a 'useful science' it is based on 'educated guesses'.
More especially, she contends, it is not only infallible but an 'unreliable policy tool'.
Others have taken the opportunity to voice their concerns; most notably influential thinker Paul Krugman. As he believes, though Reinhart and Rogoff have admitted to mistakes, he thinks that they are blinded by their belief that high debt is the sole cause of reduced growth.
Other economists are now clamouring to proclaim that they either had doubts though few can lay claim to having predicted the collapse of the sub-prime housing market which led to the world financial crisis as did American economist Nouriel Roubini.
Indeed, Krugman describes how he carries out a replication of the Reinhart and Rogoff research for the period 1950-2007 and uses G7 countries. However, even though he finds that there is an 'association between high debt and slow growth' in certain countries the relationship is the other way around:
"Britain didn't seem to suffer much from its high debt in the 1950s. And it's quite clear from the history that both Italy and (especially) Japan ran up high debts as a consequence of their growth slowdowns, not the other way around."
Mike Konczal in his blog criticises the belief that all countries can be compared in a like-for-like basis. He believes that the notion that there is a 'stable relationship between debt and growth across time and places, independent of weak economies, is now behind us.'
Moreover, Konczal asserts , there is a very serious need to reconsider the value of austerity and argues that in many countries, including this one, it was 'oversold' as a way to revive economies and that its 'toxic side effects' have been all-too conveniently ignored.
Krugman like other economists conclude that the stakes are too high and that better analysis and research is required.
There are key lessons to emerge from the rubbishing of Reinhart and Rogoff's research.
It would appear that there is too much expectation on academic economists to be able to prove that there is something definite occurring. In that sense economists are not exceptional in the need to comply with the tenets of scientific endeavour (and method).
There is a need for sense to prevail and that it is incumbent on all researchers to see what is really happening rather than seeing what is convenient or fits the particular thesis.
As some have sensibly pointed out, just because Reinhart and Rogoff's research, which fitted with the current political belief in austerity, and has signally been shown to be based on questionable research, doesn't necessarily mean that research sympathetic to Keynesian perspectives should be regarded as being superior.
Our lives are dominated by economics and there is an understandable desire for academics and experts to present theory (explanation) which will assist in producing economic growth.
As such there is no absolutely definitive answer to the question I pose in the title of this blog.
Perhaps the best that can be said is that all economic theory should be treated with extreme caution.