Early in his career, Phil Tetlock, a professor of psychology and management at the University of Pennsylvania, served on a National Research Council committee with a sobering mission: to assess what the social sciences might contribute to rescuing civilization from the threat of nuclear war. It was 1984, during the first term of Ronald Reagan, who in a speech the previous year had referred to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” Political experts felt that the relations between the two nations were “precariously close to the precipice,” said Tetlock.
