Should we trust experts? How much trust should be placed in experts?
Should we trust experts? How much trust should we place in experts? We live in a world in which almost all information about anything important is mediated by other humans. To judge credibility of the information with which we’re inundated, we tend to give more weight to endorsements by experts. We tend to place more trust in what experts say whether we are laypeople or experts ourselves. We know that opinions are not facts. In my earlier video on how to judge the quality of evidence, experts are at the bottom of the pyramid of evidence quality. In the evidence-based pyramid, the quality of evidence increases from bottom to top. In evidence-based decision making, the evidence at the top two levels are considered reliable. The evidence at bottom two levels are considered unreliable. When you look for evidence, you should start with high-quality evidence on the top of the pyramid. You only go to the next level of evidence when the high-quality evidence is not available. Expert opinions are at the bottom of the pyramid. This is why when we have medical problems, we’re advised to have a second opinion or even a third opinion.
But in our daily life and academic settings, it is common to see people cite experts’ opinions as facts. To figure out how much trust to place in experts, I’ll first introduce three types of experts. I’ll then introduce biases to which experts are more vulnerable than laypeople.
First, what are three types of experts? The first type of so-called experts are whom I call “Bsers.” They are individuals who play an expert without being one. BSers claim knowledge or expertise in an area where they have little experience or skill.
The second type of so-called experts are whom I call distant experts. They are authorities in a given area, but they express the so-called expert opinions concerning matters that are not directly relevant to their own field of study. The expertise of even a professional scientist constitutes only a speck in the vast constellation of scientific knowledge.
The third type of experts are those who are authorities concerning matters directly relevant to their own field of study. You may think those true experts know their stuff. If they endorse a claim, then the claim must be correct. Is it? Academic circles are social circles. Sometimes experts endorse a view or a claim not because they spend a lot of time investigating it. They sometimes fail to think independently. I introduce three scenarios.
The first scenario is double counting. Experts A and B have endorsed a research result. Both experts are highly trustworthy, so I think that result is more trustworthy than if either expert alone had endorsed it. What can go wrong in this scenario? What I don’t know is that B endorsed the result only because A endorse it. Here I am in fact counting A’s endorsement twice.
The second scenario is back scratching. Expert A issues a highly favorable endorsement of B’s work. Imagine that you’re expert B. How do you feel? Is it possible that you felt appreciated? Is it possible that to be reciprocal, you increase your estimation of expert A’s work from its previous high value to a very high value without additional evidence?
The third scenario is logrolling which a practice of exchanging favors. Expert A endorses B’s research result. That result must be trustworthy. What I don’t know is that A is applying for a job in B’s department, and A hasn’t read B’s paper.
Even with expertise, experts and scientists are vulnerable to an array of biases. They may believe that being an expert makes him or her objective and unaffected by biases. That’s a wishful thinking.
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