Making sure we remain ignorant about whether our experts know their arses from their elbows

In a very recent post I commented on the absence of the one signal in the public market for expertise that might really improve the market for expertise – from the perspective of the public and private interest in efficiency – and that was some surveillance of the extent to which our experts can make worthwhile predictions. Now Robin Hanson documents one such venture – which alas died stillborn.

A well-connected reporter (who I promised I’d keep anonymous) just told me that a major Washington media organization started a project studying major media pundits, and a big part of this project was assessing individual pundit forecast track records. After several months of several folks working on the project, it was killed, supposedly because management decided readers don’t care as much about pundit accuracy as they’d previous thought.

As they say in South Africa “for shame” (the “for” is usually silent).

 

 

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Patrick
Patrick
13 years ago

Well, except not as they say in South Africa, since they say ‘shame’ to pretty much anything, whether you have just been promoted, punched in the head, punched someone else in the head, won the lottery, stuffed yourself on Biltong…it’s all ‘shame’!

Sinclair Davidson
Sinclair Davidson
13 years ago

If you stuffed yourself with biltong the expression is ‘sies’.

anthony baxter
anthony baxter
13 years ago

Pretty sure this was completed a month or two ago. No real surprises, people like Krugman came out on top.

Here’s the Great Orange Satan on the piece: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/03/972769/-Pundit-Accuracy-Tested:-Krugman-and-Dowd-DOMINATE!-Update:-Professional-Left-Snubbed