Philip Tetlock (see the blog seriatum) has launched a new program – the Good Judgment Project – which is designed to help people make better forecasts about politics and other things. Tetlock is the famous psychologist whose 18 year research project, published as Expert Political Judgement in 2005, demonstrates that most forecasters get things wrong and that the more famous the pundit the more likely they are to be wrong. An indication of how significant it might be is the enthusiastic praise from Daniel Kahneman, of Thinking Fast and Slow fame who has said of Tetlock’s new project: “With some confidence, we can predict that another landmark of applied social science will soon be reached.” See www.edge.org The blog will be talking about all this, along with some other things, at a Melbourne Forum members’ discussion Why pundits get it wrong: Polls, probabilities and election predictions on October 8. Researcher John Armitage will be sharing the discussion which will be moderated by John Ridley of Clifton Consulting under Chatham House rules.  The Good Judgment research team is based in the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California Berkeley. The project is led by Tetlock, Barbara Mellers, an expert on judgment and decision-making, and Don Moore, an expert on overconfidence. Other team members are experts in psychology, economics, statistics, computer science and interface design. The projects website, https://www.goodjudgmentproject.com/ , says: “We are participating in the Aggregative Contingent Estimation (ACE) Program, sponsored by IARPA (the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity). The ACE Program aims ‘to dramatically enhance the accuracy, precision, and timeliness of forecasts for a broad range of event types, through the development of advanced techniques that elicit, weight, and combine the judgments of many intelligence analysts.’ The project is unclassified: our results will be published in traditional scholarly and scientific journals, and will be available to the general public.” The fact that the project is being funded by US Intelligence may worry many but, as the blog reported in July this year, some of the best recent research on forecasting was carried out by a team at a Canadian defence agency. See http://noelturnbull.com/blog/more-predictive-perils/ The new Tetlock project is already getting quite a bit of publicity- see https://www.goodjudgmentproject.com/ , http://www.economist.com/news/21589145-how-sort-best-rest-whos-good-forecasts and http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140612-the-best-way-to-see-the-future Some of the project is based on the wisdom of crowds approach which Francis Galton talked about in the 19^th century. Just as one should not discount the new Tetlock and the Canadian research because of the intelligence links one should not discount Galton’s views on forecasting and other subjects because of his unfortunate views on eugenics. What is particularly interesting is that the project is throwing up advice about how to make better forecasts around the acronym CHAMP which the FT (6 September 2014) summarised as: using comparisons as a starting point; looking at historical trends; averaging opinions (the Galton approach); using mathematical models; and, understanding your biases and avoiding clinging to old predictions in the face of new evidence. The last is the hardest for most people needless to say. read more

What the PR world needs now is……to take some lessons from agricultural extension practices. The suggestion was made by Dr Peter Sandman, the renowned risk communication expert, in a discussion with the blog and Tony Jaques of crisis and issues management renown.

Agricultural extension work has been crucial to programs such as the Green Revolution which helped transform crop yields throughout the world. Australia has been a leader in the field and Frank MacDougall, who worked for the Dried Fruits Board, then the Empire Marketing Board, advised President Franklin D Roosevelt, and finally worked for the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, was not only a pioneer of PR in Australia but also a pioneer in agricultural extension and social marketing. Basically agricultural extension involves taking the products of scientific research and new knowledge and applying them to agricultural practice through farmer education. It is interdisciplinary and draws on all sorts of theoretical knowledge from seeds and genetics to soil chemistry. MacDougall did this under the banner of “marrying health and agriculture”. The blog and Mark Sheehan mention him and his role in Australian PR history in a paper, The impact of divergent historical and cultural factors on convergence in global communication practice, in Asia Pacific public relations journal, vol. 14, no. 1&2, pp. 33-49. read more

The problem with interns is not only world-wide but, more worryingly, also over-represented world-wide for the PR industry.

The Economist publishes a feature, the Daily Chart, which illustrates various trends or situations. On September 8 2014 it published one on interns around the world. The source was an analysis by LinkedIn of the profile of its members – sample size 313 million – to try to work out where it was easiest to get work experience and, most importantly, which industries were most likely to keep you on beyond the serious introductory coffee-fetching period. read more

The blog, in the last post, indicated that Dr Johanna Fawkes new book on ethics,  Public Relations Ethics and Professionalism,  was due out early next year. In fact it is out now and can be ordered at http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415630382/ Apologies. Hopefully libraries in universities offering PR courses will order it. And if they haven’t already readers might consider pushing for it to happen. read more

The problem with most PR industry discussions of ethics is that they are often a mix of the banal, the simplistic, the confused and the delusional – leavened occasionally by some good case studies, some philosophical thinking and some virulent criticisms by the industry’s opponents.

An indication of the simplistic and the delusional was displayed recently by one of the US industry’s most senior practitioners, Rob Flaherty, Ketchum senior partner, president and chief executive officer. In a message to the World Public Relations Forum before the group’s Madrid meeting later in September he touted the inspirational thoughts that communications, and the endless quest for better dialogue, is inherently a force for good in the world. He went on to say that our industry can offer extremely valuable advice on what audiences expect, what they will look for and how to meet their expectations. read more

The PR industry has always been remarkable in one way – it was thought to be one of the few industries which had been feminised without leading to the reduction in salary levels which has been common among many industries and job categories, such as 19^th century clerking jobs and modern day teaching, which have experienced the same change. read more

Rumours, myths, lies and smears have always spread widely in a wide variety of societies throughout history. In Rome graffiti could smear a neighbour or a Senator and quiet chats in the bathhouse could spread them further.

In 18^th C France they provoked riots and helped inspire a revolution. In 20^th C Britain they suppressed opposition to the hanging of Roger Casement although in the latter case the information provided was true – just appalling to the hypocritical moralists of the day.  Liberals spread some pretty disgusting smears about Paul Keating and Julia Gillard probably suffered more from the same sort of stuff than any Australian PM. In recent months the same has happened to Bill Shorten with various people assuring the blog that the ‘shocking facts’ about his past with some girl would bring him down. We now know what the allegations were and, although Shorten has denied it all and the police are taking no action, we can expect more of the same – perhaps even with News tabloids leading the way probably without the self-righteous attitude to disclosure shown over the leaking of their accounts and more the initial insouciance with which they treated phone hacking and payments to Inspector Plod. read more

There is little doubt that the Australian superannuation system is a terrific boon – well at least to banks, superannuation managers, trustees, consultants and just about everyone associated with the system other than the people whose superannuation savings the aforementioned siphon off in fees, charges and other things. read more

For much of the history of western countries the default method of dealing with dissent was repression. While that’s still common outside the West, with usually fatal consequences, Western dissent today is generally controlled more by condescension and clever framing than overt repression.

Marxists see the manufacture of consent, as Chomsky put it, as manifestations of the theory of hegemony but that theory has its limitations in a world in which diverse communication channels make it harder and harder to effectively churn out the propaganda which produces false consciousness in the society. This reality may explain why the Murdoch media is becoming more and more hysterical, particularly about the ABC, and as its belief in freedom of speech for Andrew Bolt is hypocritically contrasted with demands for the sacking of anyone who expresses views with which the group disapproves. Mark Latham’s new book, The Political Bubble, is a good guide to how, and how often, that occurs. read more

‘…and so it begins’ was the subject line of an email from Tony Jaques yesterday, the centenary of the official start of World War I.

In Australia, the WWI commemoration is the world’s most expensive – more than either the British or the French are spending – and a bizarrely bipartisan product for which the planning  started under the Rudd-Gillard governments. read more