As readers may recall, Democracy in Chains by Duke History Professor Nancy MacLean is a very badly-flawed account of the life, career, and influence of the late Nobel Prize winning economist, James Buchanan. Despite the fact that the book has been shown to be replete with errors, exaggerations, and misinterpretations, it was a finalist for a National Book Award and more recently received honors from the Los Angeles Times. Most disturbingly, despite serious allegations of academic malfeaseance, MacLean is the plenary speaker at the AAUP's annual conference this Fall.
MacLean has refused to respond to any of the substantive critiques of the book, beyond to claim that her critics are almost all somehow associated with the Charles Koch Foundation, and thus somehow tainted. (In the book, she grossly exaggerates the influence of Buchanan on Koch, but the critics do not focus on that point, as there are so many other errors to deal with.)
A review by Alain Marciano of Université de Montpellier and Jean-Baptiste Fleury of the University of Cergy-Pontoise, forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Literature should, but almost certainly won't, be the final nail in the book's coffin:
