Why being a JDM scholar is sometimes hard—really hard

TL;DR KEY POINTS

• Judgment and decision making scholars--or "JDM scholars", for short--study how to improve judgment and decision making in diverse domains
• Despite their motivation or ability to help others in these domains, life can sometimes be tough for them, and for three reasons:
  1. People sometimes think JDM scholars are useless because they are generalists who others might allege lack "specialization" or "experience" in their own specific domain
  2. People sometimes think JDM scholars are wrong because those people are psychologically programmed to think in intuitively compelling but demonstrably unreliable ways which JDM scholars are trained to avoid (even though JDM are also sometimes wrong too)
  3. People sometimes hate JDM scholars because the JDM scholars think those people are wrong, and sometimes in ways with negative consequences
• Nevertheless, JDM scholars might make life easier for themselves in a couple of ways:
  1. ​By finding so-called "JDM champions" who have the time, patience and open-minded humility to advocate JDM science in their domain
  2. By aiming to make their communications accessible and tactful—specifically by avoiding criticism and by fostering positivity​

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THE BACKGROUND

​My life is great in a lot of ways: I’m lucky to have a wonderful family and many projects and activities which I enjoy, for example. Thankfully,  then, I'm very happy with my life overall. 

But despite that, one thing about my life can at times be very difficult and frustrating: being a judgment and decision making scholar. 

A judgment and decision making scholar—or a “JDM scholar” for short—is someone who professionally studies judgment and decision making: that is, someone who studies how we do, or how we should, make judgments and decisions.  I’m a JDM scholar because I want to improve judgments and decisions, both the ones from myself and those from others in their domains.

And there are many domains where judgment and decision making could be improved: a JDM scholar could reduce false death sentence convictions in law, fatal misdiagnoses in medicine or disastrous policies in politics, to take a few of countless examples. 

But despite both the possibility and promise of improving judgment and decision making in these domains, there are many reasons why this can be difficult or impossible for JDM scholars.

I will explore some of them here, as well as why I think they sometimes stem from assumptions that are specious—that is, superficially plausible but actually wrong.

(A caveat, though: while this blogpost talks of "people", it is not written with any specific "people" in mind--unless otherwise stated.)
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