When we’re all experts
While trust in traditionally trusted figures drops, Google has made us experts at everything. Or so we think.
AS someone who spends entirely too much time on Twitter – even though I promised I wouldn’t – I’m constantly amazed at people whose opinions can consistently go against the body of scientific work done by experts.
The easiest example I can think of is climate change. I follow a lot of climate news; inevitably in the comments I’ll come across someone who is swearing up and down that global warming is a lie (usually because they’re currently experiencing cold weather); they may also cite global conspiracies and, my favourite, greedy climate scientist. Because so many climate scientists are driving around in Ferraris with their grant money.
Climate scientists are highly trained individuals with a lot of letters behind their name, letters like PhD. Meaning they could probably go and get a high paying job working in a different field for much more money. Like, maybe, they could go write contrarian research for oil companies.
The point is, 97% of climate scientists (experts) agree that climate change is happening. From 1991 to 2012 there were 13,950 peer reviewed articles on climate change, and 99% agreed climate change is an actual thing. These stats have been published again and again, yet people persist in going against science experts.
And it’s not just climate change, there are anti-vaxxers and many more – people are sceptical of science seemingly like never before. But why?
In his book The Death Of Expertise (2017), Tom Nichols cites a rise in anti-expertise and antiintellectualism as a cause. Indeed, the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer (an annual global survey conducted by research firm Edelman Intelligence) shows trust in officials and experts is declining. Scientific experts are trusted by 70% of the population, while CEOs are only trusted by 43%, and government officials take a huge hit at 38%.
While trust in traditionally trusted figures drops, Google has made us experts at everything. Or so we think.
Having the combined knowledge of human experience at our finger tips means we can search for answers to our questions – or we can search for the answers we want to our questions.
One argument in online magazine Science Alert (sciencealert.com) states that infused with cognitive bias of past experiences, we make quick decisions about complex issues and then start the process of proving ourselves right. We search out information that backs our beliefs and ignore anything that goes against them. And having dug our heels in “when the facts don’t fit our beliefs, we change the facts, not our beliefs”.
That explains why showing someone on Twitter a graph of carbon dioxide increase over the past 400,000 years results in a “your chart means nothing to me” response.
Fun.
Maybe it’s human nature, but Dr Julia Shaw, an expert on memory, blames experts themselves. She cites a study from Germany’s Muenster University that found the public’s trust in any given expert depends on three things: expertise, integrity, and benevolence. It’s mainly the last point, she states, that most experts don’t fulfil – and that’s because experts use big words.
“When experts talk, they often fill the air with complicated words and unintelligible acronyms,” she writes in an article for online British newspaper The Independent.
She further states that experts want non-experts to rise to their level of sophistication.
Obviously, a scientific expert should make what they’re saying understandable but instead of feeling alienated by the ability of an expert to speak ... uh ... expertly about their topic, maybe we, the public, should aspire to understand the terms they use and better ourselves.
I don’t necessarily want my experts dumbing down what they’re saying. And as I’ve mentioned, Google is an actual thing that can help people understand.
Do note I’m discussing science experts because that’s when expertise really matters. You want the airplane you’re cruising in to have been built by experts who did all the crazy physics calculations and stress tests, not by some yahoo down the road who slapped the aircraft together with duct tape and good old-fashioned knuckle grease and reckons the wings won’t disintegrate in the air.
There are self-proclaimed experts of everything, social media, life coaching, decidedly not scientific stuff, and I think those experts are great to listen to but, hey, if you want to go against something they say, go for it!
But the backlash against actual scientific experts is worrying because the amount of peer review and work that goes into producing scientific results should give them an added weight that is more difficult to shrug off. And going against these scientific experts can cause real harm, whether it’s not getting your kids vaccinated or spending energy debating if a problem exists instead of actually, you know, moving to solve it.