But many of the clueless are willing and able to be helped, he added. "Policy makers hate looking clueless. One thing you can do to help is work with their fear and try to protect them against it."

Scientists often use two traditional methods when offering advice to public officials, neither of which work very well, according to Felten

The first is the "just the facts model," he said. "We'll give you the technical facts, and you make the decision. Everyone feels good about this. You don't have to get your hands dirty with politics and the decision maker feels good because they get to be the decider."

However, this approach is weak because "you can never transfer enough information to turn the decision maker into an expert," he said. "You can't transfer your intuition."

Instead, the expert usually ends up delivering a "brain dump," an overload of information that can't be effectively absorbed, Felten said.