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The importance of the soc sci's has been much exaggerated. The soc sci'ts are particularly bad at prediction, & so at helping us to forestall the SP crises that occur more & more often. The rate of soc change has gone up very sharply for a number of reasons, so surprises are more frequent. This rate should ae reduced, at least in rich countries, which face far more unknown situations. Poor countries, on the other hand, mainly face situations known from those slightly more advanced. What poor countries mostly need, therefore, is better information, of old kind, not new kinds of information. Crisis-anticipating information will mostly be valueless, since no one knows how to winnow it. It also requires many low-level informers, & the identity of these people is a major problem of pol'al power. So is the identity of the processor & publisher of their data. Substantial improvements in information & its use might abolish democracy. HA.

The importance of the social sciences has been much exaggerated. The social scientists are particularly bad at prediction, and so at helping us to forestall the socio-political crises that occur more and more often. The rate of social change has gone up very sharply for a number of reasons, so surprises are more frequent. This rate should be reduced, at least in rich countries, which face far more unknown situations. Poor countries, on the other hand, face mainly situations known from those slightly more advanced. What poor countries mostly need, therefore, is better information of old kinds, not new kinds of information. Crisis-anticipating information will mostly be valueless, since no one knows how to winnow it. It also requires many low-level informers, and the identity of these people is a major problem of political power. So is the identity of the processor and publisher of their data. Substantial improvements in information and its use might abolish democracy.

InAn American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy,Gunnar Myrdal (1944) argued that white Americans were caught in a dilemma, torn between their commitment to noble democratic principles—what Myrdal called the American Creed—on the one side, and their belief in the superiority of the white race, on the other. Myrdal was certain that in the struggle between democratic principles and race prejudice, the former would prevail. Prejudice, Myrdal famously predicted, was about to disappear. Acknowledging the considerable progress that has taken place in American race relations over the past 60 years, we show that on this particular point Myrdal was wrong. Contrary to his prediction, prejudice has not disappeared; nor has its political significance diminished. Prejudice remains and its importance for politics depends, today as in Myrdal's time, on political circumstance: on the vicissitudes of history and the actions of leaders.

Ecological risk assessment embodied in an adaptive management framework is becoming the global standard approach for formally assessing and managing the ecological risks of technology and development. Ensuring the continual improvement of ecological risk assessment approaches is partly achieved through the dissemination of not only the types of risk assessment approaches used, but also their efficacy. While there is an increasing body of literature describing the results of general comparisons between alternate risk assessment methods and models, there is a paucity of literature that post hoc assesses the performance of specific predictions based on an assessment of risk and the effectiveness of the particular model used to predict the risk. This is especially the case where risk assessments have been used to grant consent or approval for the construction of major infrastructure projects. While postconstruction environmental monitoring is increasingly commonplace, it is not common for a postconstruction assessment of the accuracy and performance of the ecological risk assessment and underpinning model to be undertaken. Without this "assessment of the assessment," it is difficult for other practitioners to gain insight into the performance of the approach and models used and therefore, as argued here, this limits the rate of improvement of risk assessment approaches.

A symposium contribution on, "The Supreme Court Forecasting Project," highlights the statistical model's erroneous prediction that the Court would affirm the Texas Court of Appeals' judgment that Texas law criminalizing gay sex is constitutional in the gay rights case Lawrence v. Texas. Although the prediction resulted from a programming error that was later fixed to produce a revised prediction of a 5-4 reversal, the corrected model still missed Justice Kennedy's vote to reverse the lower court even though Kennedy's empathy for gay rights was evidenced in earlier cases. A look at why Lawrence v. Texas was the most predictable of all major cases of the 2002 term is followed by an account of personal predictions for 27 cases covered during the same term as a member of the Supreme Court press corps. Specific cases are detailed & the personal predictions are compared with those of the statistical & expert models. J. Lindroth