Kerby Anderson

As 2016 is winding to an end, I think it is time for some humility from many of the so-called “experts.” That is something that Stephen Moore writes about in a recent Investor’s Business Daily column. He reminds us the on election night around 6 PM, a Hillary Clinton political operative went on television to say she believed they had a 95% change of winning. That is a high level of certainty. But a few hours later, “the one in twenty long shot named Donald Trump came in.” She certainly was not the only person to make such a prediction. Throughout the presidential campaign many confidently predicted that Donald Trump had no chance of becoming president. Even after the election, Paul Krugman, who writes for the New York Times and has a Nobel Prize in economics, predicted that the stock market would not recover after the election of Donald Trump. Many experts were wrong about the housing bubble. He provides some examples of economic predictions that were wrong. Long-Term Capital Management was a company using a computer model developed by Nobel Prize winners and other mathematical geniuses. It made money year after year until it crashed and went bankrupt. Environmental predictions by so-called experts also need to be questioned. A 2005 National Geographic story predicted “The End of Cheap Oil.” The shale oil and gas revolution now has given us a planet that is drowning in cheap energy. Stephen Moore used to work with Julian Simon who often challenged the conventional environmental wisdom of the 1970s. In previous commentaries I have written about the famous bet between him and Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich based on their predictions. Julian Simon won; and Paul Ehrlich lost. This coming year, let’s hope some of these experts exhibit some humility. If not, then let’s at least be smart enough to ignore their predictions.