Foul? What foul?

For another example of how deeply-ingrained biases can affect our judgment -- even when we try to be objective -- check out this recent study on fouls during soccer games. (And thanks to my old soccer teammate Robbie Woodward for sending it along.)

Researchers at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, researched all recorded fouls in three major soccer competitions over seven years. They discovered an ambiguous foul is more likely to be attributed to the taller of two players.

Similar studies of over the years have found that the judgment of referees can be biased by other factors, too -- such as the color of a hockey team's jersey (teams with black jerseys accrue more fouls) or even the racial makeup of officiating crew in the National Basketball Association.

But we go on pretending the biases don't exist.

DWD (Driving While Distracted)

Readers of this blog have heard us carp for some time about the dangers of distracted driving. Now, the federal government is doing something to stop this nuttiness. Effective immediately, drivers of commercial trucks and buses will no longer be allowed to text while driving. Under federal guidelines that U.S. Transportation Department announced today, drivers of big rigs and buses may be subject to civil or criminal penalties of up to $2,750.

Now, if the feds would apply a similar rule to the rest of the drivers on the road, we'd all be much safer.

Hack Me

Readers of Why We Make Mistakes already know why we pick computer passwords that are easily remembered -- and easily hacked (see pages 33-34). But if you have forgotten why or need more proof, check out the New York Times article on commonly-used passwords. Security researchers discovered a list of 32 million passwords that had been stolen from a website. And the number one password was...123456.(Number two was: 12345.)

Full-Body Scanners and Error Rates

Ah, full-body scanners. They're supposed to make us safer. But will they?

My hunch is: not much. My guess is based not on the scanners themselves (which are intrusive and come with real risks, like additional radiation deaths), but on the people who do the scanning.

Undercover tests conducted at major airports show that the "miss rates" for baggage inspectors using conventional technology is between 60% and 75%. That's a lot.

Has the Transportation Security Administration (or anyone else) assured us that full-body scans will result in lower error rates? If so, I've seen no such assurance.

Ultimately, all scans must be interpreted by the people behind the scanners. And that's where the problem comes in. As work by researchers like Jeremy Wolfe has demonstrated, human beings have real-world limits on their ability to detect objects, especially ones that they rarely see, such as bombs and guns. That's why the current miss rate is so high -- and why it is unlikely to improve with full-body scanners.

Upwardly Mobile

As readers of Why We Make Mistakes know, multi-tasking is usually a bad idea. It's an especially bad idea when you are behind the wheel of a car. Talking on a cell phone or texting while you are driving dramatically increases your chances of an accident. But we do it anyway because, among other reasons, we are overconfident about our abilities to multi-task.

For some interesting history about how we got to this point, see the page-one story by Matt Richtel in today's New York Times. As the article notes:

"Long before cellphones became common, industry pioneers were aware of the risks of multitasking behind the wheel. Their hunches have been validated by many scientific studies showing the dangers of talking while driving and, more recently, of texting.

"Despite the mounting evidence, the industry built itself into a $150 billion business in the United States largely by winning over a crucial customer: the driver."

Asleep at the Wheel -- Again

We've written before about the problem of pilots falling asleep midflight.

Now, it seems that this has happened again.

Northwest Airlines Flight 188, en route to Minneapolis, overshot the airport -- way overshot the airport. The pilots didn't turn around until they were over Eau Claire, Wis., 150 miles away.

The pilots, who have not been identified, reportedly told the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the airport police that “they were in a heated discussion over airline policy and they lost situational awareness.”

Right.

The plane, an Airbus A320, which carried two pilots and three flight attendants as well as 144 passengers, was cruising at 37,000 feet when the crew stopped responding to air traffic controllers and airline dispatchers. According to the Wall Street Journal, the radio silence continued for 78 minutes.

According to the same article, "pilot fatigue has long been regarded as one of the most serious safety issues confronting commercial aviation."

The question is: When is the FAA going to wake up?

Information Overload

More than 35 years ago, in a now-classic piece of research, Paul Slovic reported on the ability of handicappers to predict the outcome of horse races. At first, Slovic let the handicappers use any five pieces of information they wanted -- the jockey’s weight, for instance, or the horse’s previous race performance. Then he let them use 10 pieces of information. Then 20, and, finally, 40.

Slovic was studying the stress caused by information overload. What he found was fascinating: with more information, the accuracy of the predictions did not improve -- it was no better with 40 pieces of information than it was with 5.

But the confidence in those predictions did improve. This increased substantially, from less than 20% with 5 pieces of information to more than 30% with 40 pieces of information.

I thought about Slovic's findings as I read about the Galleon Group, the hedge fund whose rotund leader, Raj Rajaratnam, was arrested earlier this week on insider trading charges.

The pressure at Galleon was intense. According to published reports, analysts there were browbeaten to come up with new information on companies whose stock the fund was interested in.

But that information, at least in some cases, didn't seem to help -- and may even have hurt. As Alex Berenson reported in today's New York Times, Mr. Rajaratnam "lost millions of dollars from what prosecutors characterize as insider trading."

In one case alone, involving the chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, Galleon reportedly lost $30 million.

What is interesting here is not that some of Galleon's trades went bad; one would expect that. What is interesting is that Galleon apparently didn't learn what Slovic did: More information doesn't necessarily lead to better decisions. But it can lead to costly ones.