You aren't missing anything. The author's article isn't about the optimal ways to do statistics, it's a criticism of the informal economic discussion that dominates policy, blogs, and pop-economics--and, according to the post, an unfortunate number of actual econ papers--that says things like "economic plan X doesn't work because there hasn't been a change".
The criticism generalizes to any statistical methods, though. You always need to think about the underlying model before doing any kind of statistics in any science.
Yes, but I wouldn't say that "almost all" economists don't understand the principle (as in the title). I would be more likely to say that "almost all" reporters don't understand basic economics & statistics.
THIS. The problem lies with reporters lacking the basic econmic and statistical background to either report the news and/or challange others they are interviewing.
We are often surrounded by "armchair specialists" who know little about what they are talking about, yet carry large opinions about said topic. I'm all for constructive discourse, but that seems like a rare thing when talking about hot topics.
The criticism generalizes to any statistical methods, though. You always need to think about the underlying model before doing any kind of statistics in any science.