February 4, 2009

Bad Judgment

This is really an appendix to the Lab Quiz from yesterday.

For those of you who thought the correct answer was B, an LA Times report from a few days ago notes a study demonstrating that wine judges are not particularly good at judging wine.
"Only 10% (of judges) in a four-year study of California State Fair judging were able to consistently give the same rating, or something close, to the same wine sampled multiple times in a large blind tasting."
So that 98 pointer you had your eye on in the shop window? Just keep walking.

The rest of the article is here.

(Thanks Herby; gold medal : © Tom Schmucker | Dreamstime.com)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello again, it has been a while since my last post. I read the LA Times link, and found it very interesting. There seems to be a lot of variation among individual judges, but what about group averages? Are "good" wines given scores that are on average higher than "bad" wines? Such as average scores between different competitions? Just a thought. There does seem to be a lot of credibility given recently (last couple of years) to the power of the crowds.

Director, Lab Outreach said...

Welcome back Anonymous. Nice to see you again.

I think you raise an issue of real interest. We've been discussing something along these lines at the Picky Eater.

(http://pickyeaters.blogspot.com)

By the way, I don't think the power of crowds is anything new.

Cheers!