• When experts and pundits don't acknowledge that they don't know, it can lead to bad decisions.
• When uncertainty is admitted with a level-two problem, qualified experts' advice can get lost in the noise, or decision-makers might ask the wrong experts.
• When...

True expertise means knowing the limits of one's knowledge.

Institutions can be designed to encourage real experts to admit uncertainty. The key lies in whether the question was answerable in the first place. Good experts should be willing to say they don'...

When communicating scientific knowledge to policymakers and the public, there are three levels of questions:

• Level-one questions: Anyone with even modest expertise or access to a search engine can answer these questions. For example, 'Will price controls cause sh...

Real experts are often confident in their claims, but in the private market, the opposite can be more common.

• Self-appointed experts want airtime and overstate their conclusions.
• Actual experts want to draw attention to their work. They may ...

The rise of social media means that experts willing to share their knowledge are more accessible to the public. One might think that communication between experts and decision-makers should be very good. But this is not the case.

Outlets are flooded with self-appoi...