Abstract:
Expert judgments are a necessary part of environmental management. Typically,
experts are defined by their qualifications, track record, professional
standing, and experience. We outline the limitations of conventional definitions
of expertise and describe how these requirements can sometimes exclude
people with useful knowledge. The frailties and biases in expert judgments
can interact with the social status afforded to experts to produce judgments
that are both unassailable and wrong. Several approaches may improve the
rigor of expert judgments; they include widening the set of experiences and
skills involved in deliberations, employing structured elicitation, and making
experts more accountable through testing and training. We outline the most
serious impediments to the routine deployment of these tools, and suggest
protocols that would overcome these hurdles.
