Original title was far more accurate than the editorialised one which is extremely inaccurate ("economists" outside the subfield of economic history do not "typically" "rely" on population data for the pre-Industrial Revolution period at all) and seems like clickbait for people to add their middlebrow-at-best dismissals of the field.
"Widely used historical population time series mostly guesswork" would be a more accurate title, though you might get a few "water is wet" replies :)
"Widely used historical population time series mostly guesswork" would be a more accurate title, though you might get a few "water is wet" replies :)