Unskilled and unaware

One of the many blogs I subscribe to is that of the Annals of Improbable Research. In case you don't already know about this highly amusing organisation, then take a look at their tagline:

"News about research that first makes people LAUGH, and then makes them THINK."

Anyway, I was reading a recent blog entry which referred to something they posted last May: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.

As discussed in this news article, the gist of the study can really be summed up by the following:

"Overall, the results showed that incompetence is even worse than it appears to be, and forms a sort of unholy trinity of cluelessness. The incompetent don't perform up to speed; don't recognise their lack of competence; and don't even recognise the competence of other people."

Hmmm. Interesting.