Professor Philip Tetlock has won the 2008 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order for the ideas in his book, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?
Award judges called Tetlock's book "a landmark study that changes our understanding of the way experts perform when they make judgments about world politics." The work was selected from among 50 entries from seven countries. Tetlock, the Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair II in Leadership and Communication Professor of Leadership, will receive $200,000 as part of the award.
In a 20-year study of 27,000 predictions by 284 political experts, Tetlock found that a great many political forecasts turn out to be inaccurate – a troubling finding since government officials routinely rely on them to make decisions. All political "experts" who make forecasts need to receive more training, do more research, and be held publicly accountable for their advice, Tetlock argues in the 2005 book.
"We are thrilled to see Professor Tetlock receive such recognition for his groundbreaking research," says Dean Campbell. "His deep insights about political forecasting have significant public policy implications both in the US and around the globe."
Previous winners of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order include former Soviet President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mikhail Gorbachev and the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development for its seminal 1987 report "Our Common Future" that called for sustainable development.
The Grawemeyer Foundation at University of Louisville annually awards $1 million — $200,000 each for works in music composition, world order, psychology, education, and religion. The late H. Charles Grawemeyer, an industrialist and philanthropist, created the awards in 1984.
For more details, visit http://www.grawemeyer.org/worldorder/index.html.
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Professor Philip Tetlock has won the 2008 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order for the ideas in his book, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?