Scientists, who generally wear white laboratory jackets so they are not confused with economists, have a canon of sacred texts. Pride of place is occupied by the journal Nature, which is now a collection of specialised magazines that cover scientific advances in most measurable phenomena. Of course, trades and professions also have their stable of news and reference works while the public have Fox, the Murdoch press and social media.

For the upwardly mobile, urban, tax minimiser a cattle property and readership of Beef Central is mandatory. In contrast to Nature, which is priced like a Michelin three-star restaurant, Beef Central is free. It is also comprehensive and well written, with articles of interest to those whose interactions with beef are confined to their local butcher or Chinese restaurant.

Beef Central is also not afraid of a donnybrook. For example, it has commented on the beef industry’s “current warped obsession with sustainability” acting as a barrier to entry for aspiring beef farmers. If that’s not esoteric enough, it has a view on botulism as well.

But there is one issue that affects pretty well anything that moves. And that’s the weather.

How scientists assess the weather is established and accepted. After all, if the appropriate technology is available it just comes down to numbers and finding meaning in the pattern. In an ideal world, that’s relatively straightforward assuming, of course, the source of the numbers can count. But that is not always a given.

Farms and livestock are rather obvious features of the landscape. While cattle may look alike, there are various ways in which their number can be calculated. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has a department of boffins who do just that. So what went wrong in June 2023, when the Bureau added about 4.5 million head to the estimated Australian cattle herd size? Obviously, cattle don’t stand to attention like a bunch of kids at a school assembly but the error, which was about 4½%, is enough to distort market behaviour and expectations.

But let’s go back to the weather. Farmers are haunted by climate. It dictates cycles of propagation and harvesting. Getting it wrong can be both expensive and stressful. Unsurprisingly, Beef Central is also a keen weather observer, but with an eye on its impact on the well-being of its readers. It’s hard to picture the Bureau of Meteorology as a villain, but here’s the headline of a feature article in the newsletter of January 2024:

Did BOM’s El Nino forecast bomb the 2023 cattle market?

The reference is not to the BOM planting explosive devices in Queensland’s Roma Saleyards, which is Australia’s largest physical cattle market. At the end of 2023, New South Wales experienced record-breaking and widespread rain across the state and Victoria had the wettest ever start to 2024. Not to be outdone Queensland’s average rainfall during December 2023 was more than 20% above average. The problem, for the beef industry, was that the BOM had predicted that the summer would be hot and dry. The multi-colour forecast maps issued by the Bureau had a uniformly brown hue to try and capture the impact of the predicted El Nino effect on the landscape.

Just like any other market the interested players try and predict overall conditions and adjust their production and sales activity accordingly. Rather than having to buy feed for their cattle through the predicted drought, the farmers sold their holdings, waiting for the weather to normalise before restocking. The fear of pasture famine brought on mass panic selling, despite favourable pasture conditions. As a result, the rolling average of young cattle sold at auction fell by about 60% as prices were slashed, with farmers desperately unloading their stock. “Whoops,” squeaked the BOM. Some of the affected farmers said that in future they would ignore the BOM forecasts and simply look out of the window.

Of course, weather forecasting has a long history of getting it wrong, so it’s an easy target. Weather dynamics are very complicated and difficult to capture in sets of equations. When the predictions and calculations apply to biology, the consequences can be more widespread and profound.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich, a biology professor at Stanford University, and his wife, Anne, co-authored a book titled The Population Bomb. Apart from its explosive resonance, it predicted that the 1970s would see “hundreds of millions” of people starving to death. These predictions have been mauled over by enthusiasts and detractors for many years. Ehrlich became a darling of talk shows and his attractive media persona appeared to impress policymakers. Predictions of national collapse because of overpopulation were catnip to the media and encouraged national changes that introduced forced sterilisation in India and China’s attempts to limit families to one child. The fact that Ehrlich’s predictions were wildly incorrect can be partly blamed on data myopia. He forgot that numbers are just shorthand for real objects and events which have a history, context and momentum. And that drive isn’t always in the same direction.

Psychological uncertainty is unpleasant for most people. Given the choice, most of us would prefer a world that is ordered and relatively predictable. But as we are contrary beings, a little emotional teasing can be arousing and fun. Why buy a Powerball ticket when your chance of winning the main prize is about 135 million to one? The “rational man”, so beloved by economists, would calculate that those odds are about the same as not buying a ticket at all. Turning that coin on its head also means that forecasting is a tricky business.

Australia’s Reserve Bank has put itself, whether by accident or design, in the role of soothsayer. Among its most prominent was the Reserve Bank’s former governor, Dr Phillip. Lowe. As befits a man of his impressive background, he seemed to assume this responsibility with reluctance. He was in the chair when COVID befell Australia, so the times were unique. Dr Lowe’s management of official interest rates were so off the mark that commentators reported them with undisguised mirth. Some were unkind enough to suggest that trips to the local supermarket should be mandatory for all Reserve Bank economists as a means of obtaining data on the “real” economy.

If prognosticators would be consistently wrong, their speculations could be very useful. Those in charge of policy would be reassured that doing the opposite would be the appropriate course of action. It’s the inconsistency and resultant unreliability that is the problem. For example, Britain’s former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was on the money with his Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, which brought peace to the region. However, his assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was a powerful justification for the United Kingdom’s involvement of the United States’ invasion of the country. As the resulting Chilcot Inquiry concluded, the decision was based on flawed intelligence and had profound consequences on the future stability of the region.

Artificial Intelligence may offer at least a partial solution. The very clever algorithms at its heart knit together a selection of possible data sources that could resolve whatever question it is asked to address. These questions can vary enormously, from preparing visual material, like a cartoon, to writing a computer program or finding novel pharmaceutical compounds. But the solution relies on the range of data AI has at its disposal. Where can one find examples of people being absolutely wrong? It would appear to be quite a task, in the absence of any wide trumpeting of candidates. On the other hand, identifying people who are absolutely stupid is a doddle. Social media has them in abundance and they are scattered throughout the corridors of national decision-making, like dandruff on the shoulders of a business suit. There is a need to respect and dutifully record error; it’s a way of making society a better place.

https://johnmenadue.com/the-science-of-being-absolutely-wrong/

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.