why some experts seemed better at prediction than others, which is a very different question.

hat Tetlock actually found was that certain kinds of experts seemed better at applying knowledge to hypotheticals than their colleagues.

Prediction is a problem for experts. It’s what the public wants, but experts usually aren’t very good at it

It is certain that the public should be involved in an ongoing reconsideration of the role of nuclear weapons. But a degree in chemistry or a residency in paediatrics does not make advocates of those positions more credible than any other autodidact in those esoteric subjects.

Chomsky is revered by millions, having written a stack of books on foreign policy. He is actually a linguistics professor 

The speaker was a woman named Dr Helen Caldicott. She was not a doctor of physics or government or international affairs, but a paediatrician from Australia

Caldicott was prone to making definitive statements about highly technical matters. She would discourse confidently on things such as the resilience of US missile silos, civil defence measures, and the internal workings of the Soviet foreign policy apparatus. She resided in the US for almost a decade, and she became a regular presence in the media representing the antinuclear activist community.

Chomsky but who had no idea he was actually a linguistics professor.

Sometimes, experts use the lustre of a particular credential or achievement to go even further afield of their area, in order to influence important public policy debates.

Experts and professionals, just as people in other endeavours, assume that their previous successes and achievements are evidence of their superior knowledge, and they push their boundaries rather than say the three words that every expert hates to say: ‘I don’t know

One of the most common errors that experts make is to assume that, because they are smarter than most people about certain things, they are smarter than everyone about everything.

This outcome is cause for concern, but is it fraud? Lousy research isn’t the same thing as misconduct. In many of these cases, the problem is not that the replication of the study produced a different result but that the studies themselves were inherently ‘irreproducible’, meaning that their conclusions might be useful but that other researchers cannot rerun those human investigations in the same way over and over.

Ordinary peer review does not include rerunning experiments; rather, the referees read the paper with an assumption that basic standards of research and procedure were met.

Attempts to reproduce 100 psychology studies found that more than half of the findings did not hold up when retested

When actual experts lie, they endanger not only their own profession but also the wellbeing of their client: society.

Sometimes, experts aren’t experts. People lie brazenly about their credentials

there is outright deception and malfeasance. This is the rarest but most dangerous category. Here, experts for their own reasons (usually careerist defences of their own shoddy work) intentionally falsify their results.

Experts can go wrong, for example, when they try to stretch their expertise from one area to another.

The experts who predicted an all-out international arms race in nuclear weapons at the end of the 1950s were wrong. But they were wrong at least in part because they underestimated the efficacy of their own efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. President John F Kennedy feared a world of as many as 25 nuclear armed powers by the 1970s. (As of 2017, only 10 nations have crossed this threshold, including one – South Africa – that has renounced its arsenal.) Kennedy’s prediction, based on the best expert advice, was not impossible or even unreasonable; rather, the number of future nuclear powers was lowered with the assistance of policies advocated by those same experts.

science is a process, not a conclusion. Science subjects itself to constant testing by a set of careful rules under which theories can be displaced only by other theories.

dividuals, or even entire professions, get important questions wrong because of error or because of the limitations of a field itself. They observe a phenomenon or examine a problem, come up with theories and solutions, and then test them. Sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they’re wrong.

to say that we trust our doctors to write us the correct prescription is not the same thing as saying that we trust all medical professionals about whether the US should have a system of national healthcare. To say that we trust a college professor to teach our sons and daughters the history of the Second World War is not the same as saying that we therefore trust all academic historians to advise the president of the US on matters of war and peace.

Universities, accreditation organisations, licensing boards, certification authorities, state inspectors and other institutions exist to maintain those standards.

Experts get things wrong all the time. The effects of such errors range from mild embarrassment to wasted time and money; in rarer cases, they can result in death, and even lead to international catastrophe. And yet experts regularly ask citizens to trust expert judgment and to have confidence not only that mistakes will be rare, but that the experts will identify those mistakes and learn from them.

The egg scare was based on a cascade of flawed studies, some going back almost a half century. People who want to avoid eggs can still do so, of course. In fact, there are now studies that suggest that skipping breakfast entirely – which scientists have also long been warning against – isn’t as bad as anyone thought either.

With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone.

These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves

five

holier

zeal

Nature

In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.

sublime;

Of

And