A few years ago, Bill Kristol rocked the political world by speculating that Colin Powell would likely endorse then-Senator Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention. Powell didn't, of course — but Kristol still got the Drudge link and dominated the news cycle for a few days (in fairness, Powell did endorse Obama... months later.)
Everyone gets it wrong sometimes, and in this regard, Kristol is hardly alone. But there seems to be no disincentive for doing so. As James Surowiecki writes in the The New Yorker (regarding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370), "There are forecasting professions where this happens: stock analysts who err are more likely to get fired. But in the media mistaken conjectures tend to be quickly forgotten, so there's little downside to being bold and wrong." (Sometimes, of course, bad predictions do haunt the predictor. But that is rare — and essentially requires someone to almost intentionally tempt fate.)
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