Hence Obama's Reelection ...

The theory of the "wisdom of the crowd" has been used to explain everything from the overall accuracy of Wikipedia to the logic of democracy. And in general, that principle is true: Choices made by many are usually better than those made by a few or one.

But new research from Arizona State University and Uppsala University in Sweden adds a caveat to that notion, showing that while crowds might indeed be wise when it comes to making tough, close calls, they are actually worse than individuals at choosing between two options, one of which is vastly superior to the other. When the choice is easy, in other words, the crowd can actually be pretty dumb.