Award winning investigative journalist with the Ottawa Citizen, and author of the well researched and insightful book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway, Dan Gardner, describes how so many predictions made by experts are often so wrong. The forecasts are not only wrong, but also very wildly incorrect. Despite that dismal track record, people still turn to experts for predictions about the future. Dan Gardner attributes this dependence on experts as one of seeking the feeling of security. Even though expert opinions are less reliable than flipping a coin, the most famous experts are usually the least accurate and reliable. Dan Gardner explains why the future is always uncertain, but fortunately, the end is not near.
Dan Gardner is my internet radio show guest on Blog Business Success; hosted live on BlogTalkRadio.
The show airs live on Tuesday, January 18, at 8:00 pm Eastern Time; 5:00 pm Pacific Time.
Award winning investigative journalist with the Ottawa Citizen, and author of the well researched and insightful book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway, Dan Gardner, describes how so many predictions made by experts are often so wrong. Youwill learn:
* Why the well known experts are so often very wrong in their forecasts
* Why people feel the need to listen to and believe the experts
* How to tell whether an expert's prediction has any basis in fact
* How to do a better job of forecasting the future than the leading experts
Dan Gardner (photo left) is a journalist, author, and lecturer who enjoys nothing so much as writing about himself in the third person.
Trained in law (LL.B., Osgoode Hall Law School, Class of '92) and history (M.A., York University, '95), Dan first worked as a political staffer to a prominent politician. In 1997, he joined the editorial board of the Ottawa Citizen. His writing has won or been nominated for most major prizes in Canadian journalism, including the National Newspaper Award, the Michener Award, the Canadian Association of Journalists award, the Amnesty International Canada Media Award for reporting on human rights, and a long list of other awards, particularly in the field of criminal justice and law. Today, he is an opinion columnist who refuses to be pigeonholed as a liberal or a conservative and is positively allergic to all varieties of dogma. If you must label him -- and he'd rather you didn't -- please call him a "skeptic."
In 2005, Dan attended a lecture by renowned psychologist Paul Slovic. It was a life-changing encounter. Fascinated by Slovic's work, Dan immersed himself in the scientific literature. The result was a seminal book on risk perception, Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear. Published in 11 countries and 7 languages, Risk was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and Canada. But more gratifying to Dan was the support of leading researchers, including Slovic, who praised the book's scientific accuracy.
In his latest book, Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway, Dan delved deeper into psychology to explain why people continue to put so much stock in expert predictions despite the repeated -- and sometimes catastrophic -- failure of efforts to forecast the future. Again, Dan was delighted that his book garnered the praise of leading researchers, including Philip Tetlock of the University of California, who called it "superb scholarship," and Steven Pinker of Harvard University, who said it should be "required reading for journalists, politicians, academics, and those who listen to them."
Psychology is fundamentally about how people perceive, think, decide, and communicate -- and modern research shows that much of what people assume to be true about these basic processes is, in fact, wrong. The success of Risk led Dan to develop a series of lectures that expose and correct those assumptions, helping people think, decide, organize, and communicate better.
Dan Gardner lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with three young children and one exhausted wife.
My book review of Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway by Dan Gardner.
Listen live on Tuesday at 8:00 pm Eastern, 5:00 pm Pacific time.
If you miss this very informative show, it will be available for free download as a podcast for iPod, iTunes, and MP3 players; or play it right on your computer. To download this, or any other of my guest interviews, go to the Blog Business Success host page and click on Archived Segments. Once there, click on the podcast icon at the end of the episode description, to download the show free of charge for your listening enjoyment. You can also subscribe to the show feed.
To call in questions for my guest, the number is: (347) 996-5832
Let's talk with award winning investigative journalist with the Ottawa Citizen, and author of the well researched and insightful book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway, Dan Gardner, as he describes how so many predictions made by experts are often so wrong. The forecasts are not only wrong, but also very wildly incorrect. Despite that dismal track record, people still turn to experts for predictions about the future. Dan Gardner attributes this dependence on experts as one of seeking the feeling of security. Even though expert opinions are less reliable than flipping a coin, the most famous experts are usually the least accurate and reliable. Dan Gardner explains why the future is always uncertain, but fortunately, the end is not near on Blog Business Success Radio.
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