Don't know about you but I like a good expert: someone who knows stuff and can tell you what's going to happen
Sadly, as Philip Tetlock's study of several thousand specific predictions over a period of years by 284 individuals who make their living as experts shows, expert predictions are rather less valuable than we generally assume:
"The experts were less accurate in their forecasts than a control group of chimpanzees choosing entirely randomly would have been. Even specialists in particular narrow fields were not significantly more successful than reasonably informed laymen. "We reach the point of diminishing marginal predictive returns for knowledge disconcertingly quickly," Tetlock suggested. "In this age of academic hyperspecialisation, there is no reason for supposing that contributors to top journals - distinguished political scientists, area study specialists, economists and so on - are any better than attentive readers of the New York Times in 'reading' emerging situations."
Further, the more certain the forecaster was, the more likely his judgment would be awry, scientific proof that "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of a passionate intensity""
[from this piece in the Observer]