HAVE THE EXPERTS BEEN WEIGHED, MEASURED, AND FOUND WANTING?
2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/08913810701499668
ISSN1933-8007
Autores Tópico(s)Clinical Reasoning and Diagnostic Skills
ResumoABSTRACT ABSTRACT Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment is a creative, careful, and mostly convincing study of the predictive accuracy of political experts. My only major complaints are that Tetlock (1) understates the predictive accuracy of experts, and (2) does too little to discourage demagogues from misinterpreting his work as a vindication of the wisdom of the average citizen. Experts have much to learn from Tetlock's epistemological audit, but there is still ample evidence that, compared to laymen, experts are very good. Notes 1. Above all, I object to giving experts “value adjustments” because they made “the right mistakes.” Bluntly speaking, “I was wrong for the right reasons” amounts to “I wasn't wrong, I was lying on an anonymous survey for the greater good of humanity.” It is hard to take this defense seriously. Among other things, it is open to a courtroom retort: “Were you lying then, or are you lying now?” 2. Tetlock gives hedgehogs many chances to defend themselves, but I doubt that even the most doctrinaire hedgehogs would defend their cognitive style per se. After all, since hedgehogs often radically disagree—and scorn the predictive abilities of rival hedgehogs—they should expect the typical hedgehog to be a poor forecaster. As noted hedgehog Murray Rothbard once observed: “The clear and logical thinker will always be an ‘extremist,’ and will therefore always be interesting; his pitfall is to go wildly into error” (quoted in Richman 1988 Richman, Sheldon. 1988. “Commentator on Our Times: A Quest for the Historical Rothbard.”. In Man, Economy, and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Murray N. Rothbard, Edited by: Block, Walter and Rockwell, Llewellyn. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute. [Google Scholar], 355). 3. Tetlock is discussing efforts to make hedgehogs look better, but his point applies just as well to efforts to make experts look better. 4. In fairness to Tetlock, this is standard operating procedure in most public forums. For example, television shows normally invite economists to entertain audiences with debate, not to jointly communicate the expert consensus on a topic. 5. To make the chimps' task even easier, Tetlock could have made the confidence interval equal to the last mean plus or minus .43 SDs – splitting the normal distribution into three equiprobable regions. He also could have adjusted his categories to account for trends. For example, if growth is increasing by .1 SDs per year, he could have made his confidence interval equal to the last mean plus .1 SD, plus or minus .43 SDs. 6. This is a slight exaggeration, because the median voter is moderately more educated than the median adult (Verba et al. 1993 Verba, Sidney, Schlozman, Kay, Brady, Henry and Nie, Norman. 1993. “Citizen Activity: Who Participates? What Do They Say?”. American Political Science Review, 87(2): 303–18. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).
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