•                     What are the criteria for scientific prediction?
•                     Scientific prediction versus scientist predictions

A new workshop of the “Bucharest Dialogues” series, under the umbrellas of the Quality and Leadership for Romanian Higher Education project, took place between November 19 and 21, 2010. The event addressed forecasting experts and stakeholders from both university and business environments, its topic being “Expert Knowledge, Prediction, Forecasting: A Social Sciences Perspective”.

Dr. Dragos Aligica, the workshop moderator, stated in the opening: “We need to distinguish among the study of social phenomena, predictions about social phenomena, and reactions to the predictions about social phenomena. Our focus during this two-day seminar is on the predictions about social phenomena, more precisely on forecasting methodology and expert knowledge.”
“Whether you run a company or elaborate social policies, you have to know what the criteria, the standards by which you determine the correct prediction or the one that is highly likely to prove correct are, before the occurrence of the social phenomena. Predictions, regardless of the domain or topic, must meet certain criteria in order to be scientific,” explained Dr. Aligica.
 
The speakers were distinguished forecasting researchers and experts from the United States of America, Ireland, Australia, and Romania. Among them: Peter Bishop, Associate Professor of Strategic Foresight and Coordinator of the graduate program in Futures Studies at the University of Houston; Kesten C. Green, Senior Lecturer at the International Graduate School of Business, University of South Australia; Scott Armstrong, Professor at the Wharton School of Business – University of Pennsylvania.

Support Information
The Quality and Leadership for Romanian Higher Education project is one of the six higher education strategic projects run by the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding and funded by the European Social Fund, the Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development.
One of the purposes of the project is to enhance the capacity for long-term strategic analysis in Romanian universities.
To improve leadership capacity, the project will produce a series of working instruments for universities. In addition, the project aims at strengthening the Romanian foresight practitioner community and its integration into the international community. For this purpose, a series of 10 workshops, under the umbrella of the Bucharest Dialogues, are organized with a view to developing basic foresight concepts through international expert dialogue.