A strategy to improve expert technology forecasts.

debiasing expert elicitation overconfidence technology forecasting

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
ISSN: 1091-6490
Titre abrégé: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 7505876

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
25 05 2021
Historique:
entrez: 15 5 2021
pubmed: 16 5 2021
medline: 16 5 2021
Statut: ppublish

Résumé

Forecasts of the future cost and performance of technologies are often used to support decision-making. However, retrospective reviews find that many forecasts made by experts are not very accurate and are often seriously overconfident, with realized values too frequently falling outside of forecasted ranges. Here, we outline a hybrid approach to expert elicitation that we believe might improve forecasts of future technologies. The proposed approach iteratively combines the judgments of technical domain experts with those of experts who are knowledgeable about broader issues of technology adoption and public policy. We motivate the approach with results from a pilot study designed to help forecasters think systematically about factors beyond the technology itself that may shape its future, such as policy, economic, and social factors. Forecasters who received briefings on these topics provided wider forecast intervals than those receiving no assistance.

Identifiants

pubmed: 33990418
pii: 2021558118
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2021558118
pmc: PMC8166153
pii:
doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Langues

eng

Sous-ensembles de citation

IM

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

The authors declare no competing interest.

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Auteurs

Tamara Savage (T)

Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

Alex Davis (A)

Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

Baruch Fischhoff (B)

Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

M Granger Morgan (MG)

Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 granger.morgan@andrew.cmu.edu.

Classifications MeSH