Why Pundits Get Things Wrong

摘要

Pointing out how often pundits' predictions are not only wrong but egregiously wrong-A 36,000 Dow! euphoric Iraqis welcoming American soldiers with flowers!- is like shooting fish in a barrel, except in this case the fish refuse to die. No matter how often they miss the mark, pundits just won't shut up, and I'll lay even odds that the pundits (and pollsters) who predicted a big defeat for Tzipi Livni in the Israeli elections last week didn't slink away in shameafter her party outpolled all others. The fact that being chronically, 180-degrees wrong does not disqualify pundits is in large part the media's fault: cable news, talk radio and the blogosphere need all the punditry they can rustle up, track records be damned. But while we can't shut pundits up, we can identify those more likely to have an accurate crystal ball when it comes to forecasts from the effect of the stimulus bill to the likelihood of civil unrest in China. Knowing who's likely to be right comes down to something psychologists call cognitive style, and with that in mind Philip Tetlock, a research psychologist at Stanford University, would like to introduce you to foxes and hedgehogs.