But if the paper is a direct calculation in the framework of a standard model, and that the calculation is correct, then whoever made it should not change the view that it is, indeed, correct.

No, but your ability to evaluate whether it is, in fact, correct is impaired by the fact that you cannot assume that the calculation was made in good faith.

Peer review presumes that the paper is written in good faith. It is the hiring board's job to prevent the infiltration of pseudoscientists into academia; doing it at the paper level is simply not feasible. So if the presumption of good faith is visibly inapplicable, then "review" is not the correct tool for evaluating the paper. "Forensic reconstruction" is, and that is well beyond the scope of what can be expected of an unpaid reviewer.

Now, for general equilibrium models that doesn't really matter, because general equilibrium papers should be rejected out of hand as the pseudoscientific nonsense they are. And since the defining feature of most economic pseudoscientists is the fact that they are incapable or unwilling to operate outside a single, proven false, modeling framework, the distinction between rejecting the man and rejecting the model is in practice not very great.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.