Here’s some fun reading. An allegedly scientific, or at least quasi-scientific study of the predictions of pundits and others in the national eye. According to the study, liberals are far more likely to be accurate prognosticators than their conservative brethren, and lawyers are less likely than others to get it right.
Paul Krugman comes out way on top, and deservedly so. Not only is he almost always right, but his predictions are often made months in advance, so it’s not like he is predicting the obvious.
The study, on the whole, I fear, must be taken with a massive grain of salt. While the discussions of individual pundits point out that some predictions are slam dunks, the study itself, so far as I can see, does not factor in the obviousness of any particular prediction. If a pundit predicts that the sun will rise tomorrow, and it does, it appears that pundit gets a point. As to the lawyer factor, in which I have an obvious personal interest…well, there are lawyers and there are lawyers. The subset of pundits being examined does not necessarily include the most astute among us, so while it may be true that lawyer pundits who make it to Fox are not good at making predictions, it does not follow that one can say the same about lawyers as a class.
Still, fun reading, and one really can’t argue with the other finding-that liberals are right more often than conservatives. Conservatives live in a fact free present, so it’s not surprising that their futures are also fact free. It’s also the case that we need more of this. Every pundit on television should be given a report card now and then, and perhaps their grades should be disclosed each time they get to open their mouth on the television.
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