Reflections on Howard Raiffa's ‘Preferences for Multi-Attributed Alternatives’

✍ Scribed by Simon French

• Book ID: 102499749
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 90 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1057-9214
• DOI: 10.1002/mcda.411

✦ Synopsis

Reading Howard Raiffa's seminal paper, RM-5868, brought on waves of nostalgia, despite the fact that I was reading it in 2006 for the first time. The quarter century from 1950 to 1975 was in many ways the heyday of decision theory. All the key ideas and research imperatives were laid down then. Well perhaps not all: but the subject was defined and its foundations laid. But the nostalgia was not for the early years of decision theory: it was for an academic world in which ideas were offered and debated with a zeal and openness that seems absent today. Perhaps if I am reading too much into the feel of a mimeographed working paper; but here is a document that literally shaped a vast literature. Were such a working paper produced today, the research assessment exercises in many countries, the UK in particular, would declare it a valueless piece of unpublished work. Many institutes would discourage their members from circulating such a draft until it had been submitted, lest intellectual property rights were lost. Many journals would declare it too long for publication and those that would consider it would probably ask that its style were less reflective and it focused on the completed aspects of its contents. At our modern overcrowded conferences in a 20-30 min paper, only a fraction of the ideas could be presented. OK, I am overstating things, but I am concerned that academic research is becoming commoditized, neatly packaged and regulated by simplistic assessments, so much so that we are losing the idea of debate, of risking exposing halfformed thoughts for discussion and perhaps for others to take forward. Enough! I am ranting; let me turn to the substance of this truly great paper.

So many of the ideas that permeate decision theory and the modern practice of decision