‘ Illegal to mislead?’
How about Paul Ehrlich, Alan Greenspan or Joseph
Stiglitz’ predictions?
Review of Philip E Tetlock ‘s book,’ Expert Political J
udgement; How Good Is It?How Can We Know.’
‘It is the somewhat gratifying lesson of Philip Tetlock’s
book . . . that people who make prediction their business-
people who appear as experts on television, get quoted
in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses,
and participate in punditry roundtables–are no better than
the rest of us. When they’re wrong, they’re rarely held
accountable, and they rarely admit it, either. . . . It would
be nice if there were fewer partisans on television
disguised as “analysts” and “experts”. . . . But the best
lesson of Tetlock’s book may be the one that he seems
most reluctant to draw: Think for yourself.”
-Louis Menand, The New Yorker
On the question of expert prediction, Philip Tetlock
systematically collected a great number of individual
forecasts about political and economic events, made
by recognized experts over a period of more than 20
years and showed that these forecasts were not very
much better than making predictions by chance.