Why having the data can sometimes be handy: the Financial Times has fisked the Piketty data on Europe…

“The FT [Financial Times] found mistakes and unexplained entries in his spreadsheets, similar to those which last year undermined the work on public debt and growth of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. … For example, once the FT cleaned up and simplified the data, the European numbers do not show any tendency towards rising wealth inequality after 1970. An independent specialist in measuring inequality shared the FT’s concerns.” – Financial Times.