I just received the August issue of "Brill's Content" and there was one report that really broke me up. The editors wondered how accurate the political pundits (I call them the "Sunday morning oracles") really were when making political predictions. Brill's is all about accuracy in the media and serves as a watchdog to let us know who's lying, who's telling the truth, and who is paying whom to do it. It's a really worthwhile magazine.
Rather than take their recent prognostications and rank the "oracles" against their peers, Brill decided to see how their high-priced advice stacked-up against a monkey. That's right, a monkey! They got a chimp named "Chippy" who they claim is "not a trained political analyst" Brill put a series of questions to the ape, and he responded either by shaking his head yes or no.
The results? Well, most of the pundits were able to out guess the ape. Thirteen of the seventeen humans had more accurate predictions. That's to be expected because the actions they are trying to predict are not random, and an intelligent person with experience in the political arena should be able to beat something as random as a monkey nodding or shaking his head.
Well, they SHOULD BE. Four of the "experts" couldn't beat the monkey! The losers are:
The monkey was right 50% of the time (about as smart as flipping a coin). John McLaughlin only got 46.7% right. George Will was batting .333 (only right on one prediction out of three).
What does this tell us? Not much. It's not scientific and doesn't conclusively prove (or disprove) Darwin's theory or that George Will is dumber than Chippy. But it certainly is food for thought if you're ever unfortunate enough to listen to these pompous windbags on a Sunday morning.
Links: