'Expert' Predictions Often Fall Short, Says Grawemeyer World Order Winner

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Dec. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Political pundits should be held accountable for the predictions they make, says the winner of the 2008 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

Philip Tetlock, a University of California, Berkeley, professor of business administration and political science, earned the prize for ideas he set forth in his 2005 book, "Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?"

A great many political forecasts turn out to be inaccurate, which is troubling since government officials routinely rely on them to make decisions, Tetlock says.

In a 20-year study of 27,000 predictions by 284 political experts, Tetlock found those who take a big-picture approach are more often correct than those who operate from a single perspective. However, all political "experts" doing forecasts need to receive more training, do more research and be held accountable for their advice, he says.

Award judges called the book "a landmark study that changes our understanding of the way experts perform when they make judgments about world politics."

The work, published by Princeton University press, was selected from among 50 entries from seven countries.

Tetlock has been a professor of business administration and political science at the University of California, Berkeley since 2001. He holds a doctorate in psychology from Yale University and a master's degree in psychology from the University of British Columbia. His Grawemeyer Award-winning book also won the American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Award in 2005.

The Grawemeyer Foundation at U of L annually awards $1 million -- $200,000 each -- for works in music composition, world order, psychology, education and religion. Winners of the other 2008 Grawemeyer awards also are being announced this week.

For more details or a photo of Tetlock, contact Denise Fitzpatrick at 502-852-6171 or denise.fitzpatrick@louisville.edu or see http://www.grawemeyer.org.