Believing in experts

[Dill]

(07-01-2023, 07:31 PM)Stewy Wrote: As a scientist myself, the thing that bugs me the most is people believe expert conclusions.  People need to dig into the meat of issues themselves, find the sources and data and draw their own conclusions.

Odds are your "expert" has a political bias to their conclusions anyway, so if you aren't digging in yourself, it is highly likely you are being manipulated.  

The scientific methods declares every set of data, should have three viable conclusions/solutions.  If you're only getting one conclusion from an "expert", you're absolutely being manipulated.

Thisi s why whenever, I delve into giving an expert opinion on geoscience or Oil Industry matters, I provide multitudes of links, and images and share my conclusions based upon the observations.  But the observations are what's important.  I always want you all to dig into the data I provide and draw your own conclusions, though I'll always give an opinion of course.  :)

Stew, remember that celebrity singer who said that her girlfriend's boyfriend's testicles swelled up from a COVID vaccination? Her advice was also "Do your own research"--as she had.

People who "do their own research" without some notion of modern research standards won't do much better than people who just believe "experts." 

This thread interests me because it raises the issue of how authority is constructed in advanced 21st century democracies, how it is both legitimated and opposed for political purposes. 

You take care with your research and are suspicious when "expertise" appears without that care. You are recapping the Enlightenment argument that people have a capacity to understand and think for themselves, as opposed to trusting the paternalistic guidance of the Church. How can we get that for everyone?

Also, not all issues of authority are scientific, and the goal of research is not necessarily to exclude "bias." When we are dealing with human constructions as opposed to nature, a standard of scientific objectivity can mislead and obscure. 

Competent science is going to be beyond most people. But our democracies have evolved in part to vet expertise so that policy can be based on what we know most securely, and less on individual/party whims. That's what the argument is about in forum discussions involving education and parents' rights, where the authority of parents faces the authority of educators/social scientists. 

If my study of history and science and the development of modern knowledge leads me to think that understanding evolution is the basis of modern biology, and I want that taught my children in schools, I'll find myself facing off with anti-Enlightenment parents whose religion/ministers teach them to accept Genesis on faith. They won't want evolution taught in schools. (This is an actual example from my personal history as a school parent.)

And not being a biologist, I'll have to rely on expert help arguing against them, and research I cannot do myself.  Somehow, we must decide which experts count as "experts," amidst competing ideas of expertise. My solution at the moment is to go back to the ancients, e.g. Platonic and Aristotelean standards of what counts as "good argument," and what counts as undermining good argument. Most can or will agree to these, unless they suspect embracing them will undermine what they want to believe, shrink their political power.