‘Experts’ tend to get a bad press these days. Never a day goes by without someone pontificating about some topic about which we’re all sure we’re better informed than they are. It’s easy to get a cheap laugh out of pointing out the idiocies espoused by some so-called, possibly self-appointed or media-nominated ‘expert’.
But let’s think about this for a while - yes, I know that’s a challenge, why should we bother to think about anything when we can just have a laugh and go back to whatever it was we were doing before, which almost certainly didn’t involve thinking?
What are we saying here? That we shouldn’t believe, trust or give any attention to anyone who claims to know more than we do about a subject? Even if they have spent their whole careers studying it?
There are experts and experts, after all. The first question is – who claims this person is an ‘expert’? Are they putting themselves forward, or is it someone else citing them, possibly with the purpose of making fun of them, of causing a sensation, or just to create a ‘good story’? Second, what did they actually say, what are the grounds on which they’re making whatever statement it is that they’re making, what qualifications did they make? Particularly if we’re talking about scientists, there is a often such a high degree of uncertainty and unknowns in what they’re saying, no good scientist will come straight out and make an unqualified, unequivocal statement without explaining his or her reasons. The people who quote them, however, will very often miss out those qualifications.
It’s important to ask these questions, before we decide whether to either accept or reject any advice or information we are given. But unthinking scepticism is as bad as unthinking gullibility.