Much talk this week about Christopher Hayes’s provocative article in The Nation on the state of scholarly economics.

Tyler Cowen of George Mason U. doesn’t buy what Hayes is selling. Cowen argues that self-defined “heterodox” economists are too quick to paint themselves as victims: “Heterodox economics, as it currently stands, simply is not up to replacing the neoclassical paradigm or even living as a significant supplement.”

An anonymous econ-prof commenter at Ezra Klein’s blog complains that when they write for broad public audiences, mainstream economists play down certain nuances and doubts about the neoclassical paradigm. (But Reason magazine’s Julian Sanchez says that might be a wise choice.)

And Max Sawicky of the Economic Policy Institute, who makes a cameo appearance snacking on cheese cubes in Hayes’s article (a scene witnessed by your humble blogger), now takes the opportunity to count his blessings that he isn’t in an academic department: “Tenured faculty tyrannize over the untenured and graduate students. Professors from elite departments loom over those from benighted realms. Grad students anxiously follow the ratings of their department. Are we top 20? Only top 30? Awwww . . .”

Back in 2003, Peter Monaghan took a tour of heterodox economics for The Chronicle.