Knowing a lot about little

In 1991, a 5,000-year-old human corpse was discovered in a melting glacier high in the Tyrolean Alps. Perfectly preserved by the ice, the corpse carried an astonishingly sophisticated set of equipment. The ‘Iceman’, as he came to be known, was dressed in furs under a woven grass coat, had a stone dagger with an ash-wood handle, a copper axe, a yew-wood bow, a quiver and 14 cornus-wood arrows, a tinder fungus for lighting fires, two birch-bark containers, a hazel-wood pannier, a bone awl, stone drills and scrapers, an antibiotic birch fungus in a medicine kit, and various spare parts.

It is unlikely that the Iceman made all these items himself. Instead, archaeologists believe he relied on specialists from his tribe to supply him. Science writer Matt Ridley, in his book The Origins of Virtue, argues that such specialisation was probably the norm even 100,000 years ago, when modern homo sapiens had already evolved. If this is so, then human beings have always relied upon experts to survive and thrive. Even if this wasn’t the case in prehistoric times, it is certainly so now. The complexity of the modern world demands that each of us rely on experts to supply both our needs and our wants. Judging expertise is not too difficult when it comes to purely technical matters, such as plumbing or auto repair. But, if the technical issue is, say, theoretical physics, it is virtually impossible to determine how reliable an expert is, unless we ourselves happen to be physicists.

Virtually, but not entirely. Even if we are not experts in a particular field, there are good methods of judging reliability. Some weeks ago, Dr Stephan Gift, an engineering lecturer at UWI, was sponsored by bpTT to give a lecture titled “A New Scientific Paradigm for the 21st Century”. Now Gift is a man who has argued that evolutionary theory has no basis and that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. So, in matters of biology and geology, he is clearly a crank. While this does not necessarily mean that he is also a crank in matters of physics, it does mean that it is highly improbable that he can invent “a new scientific paradigm” on anything, since creationists are always intellectually dishonest. But theoretical physics is an esoteric subject. There are more down-to-earth matters where determining how trustworthy an expert is can impact on our very lives (though it must be noted that bpTT could probably have spent its money in more intellectually productive ways). Dr Courtenay Bartholomew is the most prominent AIDS researcher in the country. But he is also a Catholic fundamentalist who believes that promoting condom use encourages sexual activity. So, while his pronouncements on purely technical issues of HIV may be trusted, his narrow Catholic beliefs ensure that his pronouncements on social policies relating to AIDS are likely to be dangerous nonsense.

The problem is, people don’t usually realise that most experts are people who only know a lot about a little. Indeed, the amount of time and energy required to become an expert often means that such persons are very ignorant outside their particular fields. An additional problem is that, in a society like ours, there are too many people who possess degrees but lack intellectual integrity (and I mean degrees from real universities, not the kind Pastor Cuffie has). Dr. Rakib Buckridan, for example, is a clinical psychologist who also has a PhD in comparative religion, four MAs, and three BAs: so when a person with so many credentials advertises a course in parapsychology, people are naturally more inclined to believe that there is some scientific basis for psychic phenomena. But telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, auras and so on have all been scientifically tested and disproven beyond reasonable doubt. So, if Buckridan believes such phenomena are real, he is a crank too. But this does not necessarily make him unreliable in his main field, which is teaching psychology to medical and psychiatry students at Mount Hope. Mind you, this is partly because many of the theories and methodologies in traditional psychology are only a little more firmly grounded than fortune-telling.

The intellectual issue of expertise, then, is always bound up with the moral issue of integrity. Indeed, it was the 18-18 deadlock that first started me thinking about this topic, when the Independent Senators decided to remain in their posts and get $8,520 a month for doing nothing and, when the public disapproval became marked, made work for themselves by having public consultations on Constitutional reform. One Senator who got particular flak was economist Mary King, mainly because she was the chairman of the local chapter of Transparency International. Now economics is a fairly abstruse subject, but it is not in the strictest sense a science. It has few universal laws and is incapable of making non-trivial predictions. This is because economics is more complex than any of the ‘hard’ sciences, since economics arises from human behaviour. The problem is, economists have only recently begun to develop models which incorporate psychological and political factors in their analyses. This being the case, traditional economic policies often fail; and, given this shortcoming, it is even more crucial that economists be ethically impeccable. King’s choice and her arrogant responses about her senatorial posting proved her peccable. Therefore, although her policy recommendations may be sound, one cannot trust them to be sound.

These, then, are the ways in which the intelligent layperson can judge the reliability of experts. To do so, we must educate ourselves about the main ideas of the modern world, from thermodynamics to evolution to democracy to comparative advantage, confident that anyone who summarily dismisses these theories is likely to be suspect. We must also train ourselves in logical analysis, so we can perceive contradictions without necessarily understanding all the details of an argument. And we must rid ourselves of the inclination to put faith before fact. Of course, the average citizen has neither the time nor the inclination to make this effort. But that’s okay, once a sufficient number of people in positions of authority do make the effort. If that happens, then real experts get the chance to influence public policy and perception, and the society moves forward. But, if that doesn’t happen, then our society is condemned to regress, held in the thrall of people who only pretend to know what they’re talking about. Which, I suppose, is as good an explanation as any for our present Prime Minister.