Distrust Authorities, Including Me

Like many teachers, I’ve agonized over what to tell my students about the crises convulsing us lately, the pandemic and U.S. presidential election. What lessons can we draw from what’s happened? I’ve decided to double down on the anti-wisdom I lay on all my classes: Distrust authorities, including me.

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Another notable expert critic of experts is social psychologist Philip Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania. In his 2005 book Expert Political Judgment, Tetlock reported on a study of 284 professional pundits, including academics, government officials and journalists, who comment on politics and related issues via mass media and in scholarly journals and conferences. Tetlock assessed the accuracy of 28,000 of these pundits’ predictions concerning elections, wars, economic collapses and other events. 

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