<<Anyway, as it happens, his autobiography at the Nobel website ( <a href=http://www.nobel.se/economics/laureates/1991/coase-autobio.html target=new>http://www.nobel.se/economics/laureates/1991/coase-autobio.html</a> ) actually goes into a lot of detail about his visit to a phrenologist at age 11. The "lie" in the question was about exactly what the phrenologist told him. In this case, a Coase expert who knew about Coase's childhood would probably enjoy the joke in this "lie", but I'm sure it went over everyone else's heads. That's a shame, because the facts of Coase's visit to a phrenologist are interesting, but the players who didn't know about it never got to learn it, being told that the whole story as presented was just a lie.>> This is sort of missing the point. Economics majors, who have a right to get economics questions first, study graphs and equations, not trivia about the biographies of economists. This sort of question, except for the part which actually defines his theorem (and does so fairly quickly, causing a buzzer race among anyone who knows it) rewards people who know trivia, not economics. It's the equivalent of counting yet another "He was apprenticed to a bookbinder" <buzz> "Faraday" question as physics. It screws people who know the actual topic in favor of people who know biography, which is its own, separate topic and one of extremely overstated importance in quizbowl right now. As always, in my opinion, but I think everyone's been frustratingly beaten to a question in their field by a biography/trivia expert and agrees with me at least a little here... --M.W.
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