With all respect, your opinion is not as sophisticated as you have come to believe. Although an academic may have excellent writing and composition skills, his works outside of economic theory and research are not entirely separate. The same neurons are firing in both realms and that does color the perceived quality of his academic writings. It is a pervasive aspect of the social construction of fields of inquiry. A lack of honesty in public discourse is not walled off and then the individual expresses absolute honesty in academic work. Character matters and I have seen the consequence of it in a large number of academic works. A strongly biased view is more obvious in the social sciences than in, for example, physics, but bias does worm its way into academic works. As for peer review—that process has its value and its weaknesses.
With all due respect, you are not even writing in the English language.
A lack of honesty in public discourse is not walled off and then the individual expresses absolute honesty in academic work.
You re an idiot. No one has rated Krugman on "honesty." The value of his work is not that he says x,y, and z are true. Rather that he has provided new analyitical tools to understand things that everyone sees. it is not that the tools are trusted, but rather than others agree that his insights are correct and provide explanations for what is observed in the real world.
Despite what others think, you don't forge your way into a noble prize by creating patent medicines. You get the prize because lots and lots of other people have proven that you have created something new of really substantial and enduring value that enables further intellectual process by others.
Wanna know why conservatives are losing. Examine your streadfast closed-mindedness in a mirror. When you see how repulsively ugly this is you will begin to understand.