If someone consistently misrepresents facts, that's one thing. If they constantly produce content and sometimes fail, that's another. Freakonomics is cool for new ideas, but if you really get excited by something they publish, it's worth doublechecking. I don't think discounting them as gossip based on one article is the right solution.
There's nothing wrong with "content" when it's purely entertainment, but freakonomics falls well into the TED, Malcolm Gladwell, "fake-insight" category, that makes you feel clever about knowing some counter-intuitive fact, when the majority of the time, it's only counter-intuitive because it has been presented unintuitively in the first place, or because the fact is actually bullshit.
