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Abstract
In his justly celebrated Expert Political Judgment, Philip E. Tetlock evaluates the judgment of economic and political experts by rigorously testing their ability to make accurate predictions. He finds that ability profoundly limited, implying that expert judgment is virtually useless, if not worse. He concludes by proposing a project that would seek to improve experts' performance by holding them publicly accountable for their claims. But Tetlock's methods severely underestimate the value of expert opinion. Despite their notorious disagreements, experts have highly pertinent information and advice in many areas of public policy. The main problem with experts is that political actors seize on their most extreme views in one direction or the other, and overlook their areas of general agreement and the core of relatively reliable information that they provide.
Notes
1. For an example of this view, see “What Went Wrong? The IMF Blames Inadequate Regulation, Rather than Global Imbalances, for the Financial Crisis,” The Economist, 6 March 2009. http://www.economist.com/node/13251429. For a variety of interpretations of the causes of the financial collapse, see Friedman Citation2009 and Colander et. al. Citation2009.
2. “The American Economy: The Great Debt Drag,” The Economist, 16 September 2010 http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=348918&story_id=17041738
3. The following paragraphs largely elaborate upon brief remarks by Bryan Caplan (Citation2007a), pointing out the intrinsic difficulty of beating random guesses on Tetlock's prediction tasks.
4. Furman v. Georgia (408 U.S. 238), 1971. More precisely, the Court set requirements of specific legislative guidelines for application of the penalty that no existing laws happened to meet at the time of the decision.
5. “The Austerity Debate,” The Financial Times, 18 July 2010 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dc3ac844-9010-11df-91b6-00144feab49a.html
6. “Is Newer Better? Not Always,” The New York Times, 11 September 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/opinion/12sun1.html
7. “The Science of Climate Change: The Clouds of Unknowing,” The Economist, 18 March 2010. http://www.economist.com/node/15719298/print
8. “Health Care Reform, at Last,” New York Times, 22 March 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/opinion/22mon5.html?pagewanted=all.
9. See the survey of economists discussed in Caplan Citation2007b and the surveys of members of the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations discussed in Page and Bouton Citation2006. Such surveys are of considerable interest, but they would not suffice for informing policymakers about the relevant expertise in any area of policy.