Bloomberg News Paul Krugman in January

The gloves are off in the roiling academic dispute over the merits of austerity and the dangers of debt.

In the latest round, Harvard economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart accused Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman of “spectacularly uncivil behavior” and the inaccurate allegation that they refused to share data supporting their work linking heavy debt levels to subsequent slow economic growth.

Papers such as Mr. Rogoff and Ms. Reinhart’s, which warn of the perils of too much government debt, “haven’t just lost their canonized status, they’ve become the objects of much ridicule,” Mr. Krugman wrote in a recent New York Review of Books attack on advocates of austerity.