Los Expertos ¿Podemos Creerles?

Este es un tema que he tratado de manera casual desde hace tiempo, particularmente porque dentro de mi experiencia de casi dos décadas en los medios, me he topado con situaciones extraordinarias e increíbles. También he conocido muchos "expertos" que sin ningún remordimiento ofrecen su recomendación de manera tajante y con una enorme sobre confianza..... Este último tema esta ampliamente tratado en la Economía del Comportamiento (behavioral economics) y en otra ocasión lo desarrollaré. En este post quiero hacer referencia a dos interesantes notas sobre este tema

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La primera es una nota de Tim Harford Valuable advice on investment advisersBe careful whose interests the expert is serving…

Hace referencia a un paper de Sendhil Mullainathan, Markus Noeth and Antoinette Schoar en donde realizan un experimento con expertos o asesores financieros para ver si sus recomendaciones realmente son buenas.... y los resultados son muy interesantes, aunque en los personal no me sorprenden

And the results? Advisers made flattering remarks about the clients’ portfolios and then proceeded to try to change them in exactly the way that would tend to generate commissions. The gap between flattery and action was particularly stark in the case of the diversified low-cost portfolio; advisers were more likely to praise it, but more than 85 per cent of them tried to change the strategy. Almost a third of advisers refused to give any advice at all until the client agreed to transfer control of their portfolio to the adviser, which makes it almost impossible to rate the quality of the advice. And a curiosity: this behaviour was substantially more common when the mystery shopper was a woman.

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La otra nota es de Ben Weinlick The Trouble With Experts en su blog TheCreativity Post. En ella hace referencia a un documental de la BBC y comenta...

The doc shows how we are hungry for the expert that can give us the quick fix, the silver bullet, the easy formula for success in any area of life we are trying to master. The more sure an expert sounds, the more we perk our ears up and listen even if what they are saying is bogus. Sounding sure is exciting and a charismatic quality, doubt and admitting one might be wrong about something gets boring and people tune out.

y concluye con la siguiente cita, que realmente me gusta... (la imagen que agrego es de la nota de Ben)

“The experts who are most often accurate in our studies are cautious, quiet and somewhat more boring. Try selling that to a TV producer.” Berkeley Psychology Professor Phillip Tetlock