Heed your own advice, Lakhan

THE EDITOR: Columnist Anu Lakhan wrote an entire column on the Dunning-Kruger effect (Sunday Newsday, November 24) which she described as showing “that people who knew a small amount about something tended to believe they had a much greater understanding of that area than they actually did.”

Ironically, this exactly describes Lakhan, since the Dunning-Kruger effect has been debunked. As proved in a paper in the journal Numeracy by Nuhfer et al, the effect is a statistical artefact that does not demonstrate the confident ignorance that, surprise surprise, she attributes to American president-elect Donald Trump.

Lakhan also wrote, “Metacognition refers to the ability to take a few steps back and try to find a shred of objectivity with which to look at yourself.”

She would do well to heed her own advice.

JENSEN RUSHTON

San Fernando

Anu Lakhan responds: “You can’t know what you don’t know,” I said somewhere in the column.

Thanks for the heads-up, Mr Rushton.