A reminder about experts and what their opinions are worth.

[swag]

DU's redqueen posted something elsewhere that reminded me of Philip Tetlock's dry but interesting 2005 book Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, that seems very relevant, even poignant, today as we look at the likes of William Kristol, David Broder, Tom Friedman and all the other bloviating opinionators still huffing and puffing at us through our TV screens, in spite of their histories of profound mistakes and the messes their cheerleading helped lead us into.

Louis Menand reviewed the book here for the New Yorker and had this, among other things, to say:

It is the somewhat gratifying lesson of Philip Tetlock’s new book, “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?”, 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. They insist that they were just off on timing, or blindsided by an improbable event, or almost right, or wrong for the right reasons. They have the same repertoire of self-justifications that everyone has, and are no more inclined than anyone else to revise their beliefs about the way the world works, or ought to work, just because they made a mistake. No one is paying you for your gratuitous opinions about other people, but the experts are being paid, and Tetlock claims that the better known and more frequently quoted they are, the less reliable their guesses about the future are likely to be. The accuracy of an expert’s predictions actually has an inverse relationship to his or her self-confidence, renown, and, beyond a certain point, depth of knowledge. People who follow current events by reading the papers and newsmagazines regularly can guess what is likely to happen about as accurately as the specialists whom the papers quote. Our system of expertise is completely inside out: it rewards bad judgments over good ones.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. rewarding bad judgment over good. How true.

it explains much of what we see on cable.

There are a few political/ legal experts who raise issues and inform. Jonathon Turley comes to mind as someone who informs more than entertains.

Bill Kristol is also worthy of note. Regardless of the issue, and ignoring any qualifiers he may mention, with Kristol you are guaranteed one thing each time he opines: EVERY SINGLE THING HE SAYS IS 100% wrong. It is nice to have that kind of predictablity around.

[swag]

2. I wish Kristol would try financial punditry. We could all strike it rich.

[DangerDave921]

3. I like Mr. Saturday Night

When Harry met Sally is pretty good too.

[swag]

6. thanks for the tips

i'll check that shit out.

[NI4NI]

4. But people like Howard Dean and Scot Ritter

whose pre-Iraq invasion predictions were precise, still remain smeared and labeled as un-patriotic whackos.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. heck, some people here still piss on

Zbig Brezinsky, even though he said it would be a catastro-fuck to invade Iraq. And he, too, was right