After reading Clive Cook, Arnold Kling observes:
My take on this is that the consensus of economists is likely to be more reliable on microeconomic issues than it is on macroeconomic issues. In my view, fundamental macroeconomic issues are unsettled. It makes sense to have what a Bayesian statistician would call “diffuse priors” and what an ordinary layman would call an open mind.
[…]
What is important to bear in mind is that just because economists cannot settle disputes about macro does not mean that all of economics is bunk or that nowhere is there a reliable consensus in economics. Macroeconomics is only one area of economics.
I whole-heartedly agree, albeit with a simple addition: To the typical person on the street, I suspect that economics is thought of as a combination of finance and macroeconomics. Other sub-disciplines are rarely imagined.