The intelligence failures surrounding the invasion of Iraq dramatically illustrate the necessity of developing standards for evaluating expert opinion. This book fills that need. Here, Philip E. Tetlock explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events, and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts. Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat. Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making.

Product Description: This provocative book analyzes why individuals in pluralist democracies disagree collectively about the rights and values they agree on individually. Based on interviews with thousands of citizens and political decision-makers in Canada, The Clash of Rights explores the politics of a wide array of issues-from government wiretapping to antihate legislation-and challenges some of our most commonly held assumptions about democratic politics...read more

Product Description: Drawing on a multitude of data sets and building on analyses carried out over more than a decade, Reasoning and Choice offers a major new theoretical explanation of how ordinary citizens figure out what they favor and oppose politically...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Product Description: Are policymakers capable of learning about the complex international environment they must deal with when formulating foreign policy? Interest in the phenomenon of "learning" has been growing, driven in part by the advent of Gorbachev, and by prospects for ending the Cold War...read more

There is a broad global consensus on the imperative to avoid nuclear war, but that consensus provides little guidance for policy. A primary reason is the lack of understanding regarding how a nuclear war might occur or how one could be prevented. This volume is part of a series that aims to examine the contributions made by the social and behavioural sciences to an understanding of the factors that may promote or inhibit nuclear war. It builds a basis for new intellectual approaches to the subject of international security. Under the sponsorship of the Committee on Contributions of Behavioral and Social Sciences to the Prevention of Nuclear War, leading scholars here review knowledge about specific behavioural and social phenomena that may be critical in determining war and peace. Among these are the behaviour of decision-makers, the pressure of public opinion, the effect of threats aimed at deterring dangerous behaviour, changes in the economic interdependence of states and the processes of negotiation when stakes are high. The book seeks to increase knowledge, to identify research directions that hold promise for yielding policy-relevant insights and to clarify convergences and disparities between these lines of research. It is hoped that a critical distillation of such knowledge can offer a basis for developing clearer knowledge and, consequently, better advice for preventing nuclear war.