Modern Problem: Everyone's an Expert

Jeremy Hsu, Staff Writer, LiveScience.com

Modern society depends on experts, or people with

specialized skills and experience in certain areas. But

scientists have found a growing number of people

challenging their expertise, even on issues where strong

scientific agreement exists.

For instance, parents and child advocates have continued

to argue that some vaccines may cause childhood autism

-- despite overwhelming medical evidence showing no

link. That has led to cases where unvaccinated children

unwittingly caused outbreaks of diseases that had largely

disappeared from modern life.

"The prospect of a society that entirely rejects the values

of science and expertise is too awful to contemplate,"

said Harry Collins, a social scientist at Cardiff University

in the U.K., in a commentary for this week's issue of the

journal Nature.

Collins suggests a possible start to a solution --

reconsidering how we think about scientific expertise.

Who's an expert?

People have different levels of expertise, Collins noted.

This can range from the lowest-level "beer mat"

knowledge of scientific facts useful for playing Quizzo or

"Jeopardy," to the highest level of professional scientists

who contribute to research.

Most people know to rely on the highest-level practicing

experts, whether they're getting medical attention for a

broken leg or finding an electrician to do the wiring in a

house.

"I'm going to ask someone who knows about it rather than

choose my mum," Collins told LiveScience.

Even Holiday Inn Express' "Stay Smart" ads get their

humorous kick from turning assumptions about experts

upside down. "You trainers are saviors, man," says a

basketball player in one TV spot. "Oh, I'm not a trainer ...

but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night,"

responds the man working on the player's leg - to which

the player looks confused and a bit terrified.

That same bewilderment might describe scientists'

reactions to lower-level experts who have emerged on

issues such as autism, HIV/AIDS and climate change.

Public debates on these issues run the whole gamut of

scientific knowledge, and people aren't necessarily

listening to those with the most scientific expertise.

Sorting through controversy

Some non-scientists do achieve fairly good

understandings of science, whether it's "popular

understanding" from reading sites such as LiveScience,

or even "primary source knowledge" from reading journal

articles published in Science and Nature.

But work by Collins and others suggests that lower-level

experts run into trouble on disputed science issues,

without full working knowledge of the details and not

having spent years in the scientific community. That may

lead them to latch more readily onto minority scientific

opinions which don't fit well into overall scientific

understanding of a particular area.

In those cases, a person with primary source knowledge

may not understand the underlying science much better

than a chess novice understands a bishop's move, Collins

said.

Science, not scripture

Collins added that scientists can also do better in

communicating their expertise to the public. Trying to

convey science as an absolute truth or revelation - not

unlike religious truth - ultimately backfires because

science is uncertain and constantly changing. And

besides, he noted, it smacks of hubris that most people

have little patience for.

"You do have people like Richard Dawkins and Stephen

Hawking presenting the kind of model of science that is

damaging; the old 'revelation of mystery,' doctrinaire

atheism stuff which implicitly claims that science can

authoritatively solve all cultural problems," Collins said.

Dawkins has become known as an evolutionary biologist

and outspoken atheist who often spurs controversy with

his criticism of religion. Hawking is a renowned theoretical

physicist who has written several popular science books,

but whom Collins describes as fostering a "science that

looks more like religion, including himself as an icon."

However, many scientists take great pains to carefully

stress the uncertainties of their work. That may provide

the middle road for a modest science that can impress

with its values - open debate and understanding based on

observation, theorization and experimentation.

"Science's findings are to be preferred over religion's

revealed truths, and are braver than the logic of

skepticism, but they are not certain," Collins writes. "They

are a better grounding for society precisely, and only,

because they are provisional."

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