Once again we see convincing arguments for devil’s advocate and contrarian teams in group assessments
The social psychology of groups conducting scientific assessments (e.g. the IPCC) is a topic that in my opinion does not receive sufficient attention. For background, here are some previous CE posts:
- Importance of intellectual and political diversity in science
- No consensus on consensus
- Do scientific assessments need to be consensual to be authoritative?
- Are climate scientists being forced to toe the line?
- We are all confident idiots
- Cognitive bias – how petroleum scientists deal with it
This past week, there have been two articles on this topic, that provide important insights of relevance to the IPCC assessment process.