Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
What do sumo wrestlers, drug dealers, and schoolteachers have in common? They all respond to incentives in predictable, often deceptive ways that only hard data can uncover.
Human behavior is fundamentally driven by a shifting matrix of economic, social, and moral incentives.
Conventional wisdom is frequently fabricated by self-interested experts and must be rigorously tested against raw data to uncover the truth.
Experts across all fields regularly exploit their informational advantages to serve their own agendas at the expense of the uninformed public.