The intelligence failures surrounding the invasion of Iraq dramatically illustrate the necessity of developing standards for evaluating expert opinion. This book fills that need. Philip 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.

“It is the somewhat gratifying lesson of Philip Tetlock’s new book. . . that people who make prediction their business . . . are no better than the rest of us. When they’re wrong, they’re rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either…. But the best lesson of Tetlock’s book may be the one that he seems most reluctant to draw: Think for yourself.”
ISBN: 0691128715
Publisher: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Subtitle: HOW GOOD IT IS? HOW CAN WE KNOWN?
Author: PHILIP E. TETLO