The psychology of expert predictions

This week’s edition of BBC Radio 4 All in the Mind has a fantastic section on the psychology of knowledgeable predictions that bursts lots of bubbles about the power of experts but also discusses how to make more accurate predictions.

You can listen to the whole programme online but it seems the crucial section has accidentally found it’s way onto YouTube which you can catch here.

The discussion is with author Dan Gardner and by psychologist Dylan Evans who tackle the links between risk, prediction and knowledge.

It has lots of fascinating insights, including the fact that the fame of experts is inversely related to their accuracy, that US weather forecasters are better than UK forecasters (and not because UK weather is more difficult), and that more confident predictions are more likely to be wrong.

If you want to catch the whole of All in the Mind the section of grief myths is also wonderful.

Link to All in the Mind.
Link to section on expert predictions.

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