Philip E. Tetlock

Philip E. Tetlock is Leonore Annenberg University Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also written several non-fiction books on politics, including Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics (with Aaron Belkin; 1996) and "Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?".

His Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (2005) describes a twenty-year study in which 284 experts in many fields, from professors to journalists, and with many opinions, from Marxists to free-marketeers, were asked to make 28,000 predictions about the future, finding that they were only slightly more accurate than chance, and worse than basic computer algorithms which was the recipient of the 2008 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Dr. Tetlock was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Award for best book published on government, politics, or international affairs and Robert E. Lane Award for best book in political psychology, both from American Political Science Association in 2005. Forecasters with the biggest news media profiles were especially bad. The study also compared the records of "foxes" and "hedgehogs" (two personality types identified in The Hedgehog and the Fox).

The Value of Statistics

Tetlock's conclusion about expert opinion is that statistics when properly used are more reliable than human judgement in every sphere of activity.

Awards

In 2000 Tetlock was awarded the NAS Award for Behavior Research Relevant to the Prevention of Nuclear War from the National Academy of Sciences.

References

• Philip Tetlock - Wharton Management Department
• Philip Tetlock - Psychology, UPenn
• Philip Tetlock - Political Science, UC Berkeley
• Phil Tetlock
• Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair II in Leadership and Communication Professor of Leadership
• "Why Foxes Are Better Forecasters Than Hedgehogs" a Long Now seminar