Then I noted that in The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb answers the question to his own liking: … four decades ago … [Benoit] Mandelbrot gave pearls to economists … which they rejected because the ideas [from complexity theory and fractal geometry] were too good for them.

The bickering among economists and their detractors continues, as it has for a very long time. See, most recently, discussions labeled Hip Heterodoxy.

Finally, for a very good description of the state of economics read The Walasaid from The New School.