
Trusting Judgements
How to Get the Best out of Experts
Mark A. Burgman(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Published on 26. October 2015
Book
Hardback
214 pages
978-1-107-11208-7 (ISBN)
Description
Policy- and decision-makers in government and industry constantly face important decisions without full knowledge of all the facts. They rely routinely on expert advice to fill critical scientific knowledge gaps. There are unprecedented opportunities for experts to influence decisions. Yet even the most experienced can be over-confident and error-prone, and the hidden risk is that scientists and other experts can over-reach, often with good intentions, placing more weight on the evidence they provide than is warranted. This book describes how to identify potentially risky advice, explains why group judgements outperform individual estimates, and provides an accessible and up-to-date guide to the science of expert judgement. Finally, and importantly, it outlines a simple, practical framework that will help policy- and decision-makers to ensure that the advice that they receive is relatively reliable and accurate, thus substantially improving the quality of information on which critical decisions are made.
Reviews / Votes
'Trusting Judgements: How to Get the Best out of Experts ... is very clearly and logically structured ... this book is written in easy and enjoyable language and very much oriented toward practical needs.' Pierre L. Ibisch, Conservation BiologyMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
4 Tables, black and white; 17 Halftones, unspecified; 39 Line drawings, unspecified
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
468 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-107-11208-7 (9781107112087)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
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10/2015
Cambridge University Press
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Person
Mark A. Burgman is the Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conservation Biology. He has published over 200 refereed articles and seven authored books in ecology, conservation and risk analysis, and has worked in Australia, the United States and Switzerland. In 2006 he was elected to the Australian Academy of Science and received the Society for Conservation Biology Distinguished Service Award. He won the Royal Society of Victoria Research Medal in 2013.
Content
Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. What's wrong with consulting experts?; 2. Kinds of uncertainty; 3. What leads experts astray?; 4. Dealing with individual experts; 5. The wisdom of crowds revisited; 6. Tips to get the best out of experts; Appendix. Sources; References; Index.