Words of estimative probability

[5] Physicians and clinical scientists face a very similar problem in obtaining informed consent for patients, where words such as "rare" or "infrequent" do have actual probabilities defined.

A representative guide for obtaining informed consent from people participating in social science or behavioural research, or of the potential risks of a medical procedure, suggests giving typical numerical chances of an adverse event when words of estimative probability first are used.

Michael Schrage,[7] an advisor to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Security Studies Program, wrote in a Washington Post editorial that requiring analysts to produce and include quantitative measures of source reliability and confidence along with their findings would reduce ambiguity.

Former acting CIA director and longtime analyst John McLaughlin tried to promote greater internal efforts at assigning probabilities to intelligence assessments during the 1990s, but they never took.

"[9]Since combining quantitative, probabilistic information with estimates is successful in business forecasting, marketing, medicine, and epidemiology it should be implemented by the intelligence community as well.

However, he sees a place for stochastic analyses over a very long period, it "points to a fairly slow learning curve that also challenges the wisdom of making preemption a cornerstone of U.S. security strategy.

"[10] The reservations stated are significant: Mathematical and statistical analyses require a lot of work without rapid and necessarily commensurate gains in accuracy, speed or comprehension.

The National Intelligence Council's recommendations described the use of a WEP paradigm (table 2) in combination with an assessment of confidence levels ("high, moderate, low") based on the scope and quality supporting information:

However, the NIC's discussion of this paradigm seems to undercut its chances of being effective: Intelligence judgments about likelihood are intended to reflect the Community's sense of the probability of a development or event.

[opinion] In 1964 Kent railed against the "restort to expressions of avoidance...which convey a definite meaning but at the same time either absolves us completely of the responsibility or makes the estimate enough removed ... as not to implicate ourselves.

[16] See Analysis of Competing Hypotheses Mercyhurst's WEP paradigm reduces Kent's schema to its least ambiguous words: Analytic confidence and source reliability are expressed on a 1 to 10 scale, with 10 high.