What kind of economist should I be when I grow up? The opening weeks of the year have brought an embarrassment of answers.

Andrew Haldane, chief economist of the Bank of England, won headlines for comparing economists to weather forecasters. Alas, it was not a flattering comparison: Haldane mentioned Michael Fish’s infamous October 1987 forecast on primetime British TV, which offhandedly reassured viewers that there wouldn’t be a hurricane so “don’t worry”. The warning was followed by a severe storm that killed 18 people in the UK and four in France.

But if economists are like weather forecasters, the lesson is that they should keep trying. Meteorologists have a difficult job yet they do it well — partly with the help of half-a-million weather measurements a day and powerful supercomputer simulations. Perhaps economic forecasting should emulate that approach. For now, many serious economists think that economic forecasting is for fools and charlatans, and that real economists have a different job entirely.