Doctors also scored poorly on knowledge of dangerous complications associated with giving nutrition to someone who has not eaten for a while or is severely malnourished.
Relying on our intuitions alone for self-knowledge is dangerous, because thanks to the nature of the adaptive unconscious, they are often no more accurate than a shot in the dark.
Among finance professionals there is widespread agreement that it is an issue where politicians are pretty much totally ignorant, but no less dangerous for their lack of knowledge.
This knowledge gap is dangerous not just because of the possibility of becoming a prey to a fraud like Madoff but also because of the risk of not meeting necessary goals such as retirement.
"I would have thought it would be reasonable to have a cut-off - since we had the knowledge that asbestos was dangerous, employers should have been taking precautions, " he said.
There is nothing wrong with healthy skepticism, but there is also nothing wrong in acknowledging that a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing, that there are really people out there whose in-depth educations and experience better qualify them to address certain issues.