Rationally Speaking #16 - Deferring to Experts
Rationally Speaking Podcast
New York City Skeptics
4.6 • 787 Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2010
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At a talk he gave at TAM 8, Massimo argued that non-experts in a field aren't qualified to reject an expert consensus, such as that on anthropogenic climate change. Most recently, he has taken Jerry Coyne to task for making a philosophical argument without having the necessary expertise. This raises a number of questions: Are there fields that have no experts, or that have pretend experts? If there is a lot of disagreement among experts on a topic, should we take any individual expert's opinion less seriously? How much consensus is required before a non-expert should say, "OK, looks like this question really is settled"?
Perhaps noted expert George Carlin had it right when he said: "I have as much authority as the pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education. |
| 0:22.5 | For more information, please visit us at NYCCEptics.org. |
| 0:35.6 | Welcome to rationally speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense. |
| 0:41.5 | I'm your host, Massimo Piliucci, and with me, as always, is my co-host Julia Gileff. |
| 0:46.3 | Julia, what are we going to talk about today? |
| 0:48.8 | Well, Massimo, a number of recent conversations we've been having on our blog, Rationally Speaking, |
| 0:53.5 | have started coming back to the |
| 0:55.1 | question of when is it appropriate for non-experts to defer to the opinion of experts? So that's the |
| 1:03.8 | question we're going to ask today. And in doing so, we're also going to look at a few case |
| 1:09.3 | studies of fields in the sciences, social sciences, |
| 1:13.0 | maybe even philosophy, and ask, are there some fields that don't actually have experts? |
| 1:18.7 | Or are there fields that have pretend experts? |
| 1:21.8 | Sure. |
| 1:22.2 | Think that they're experts, but they're not. |
| 1:24.1 | Right. |
| 1:25.3 | For instance, let me give you a quote from an expert in the field, George Carlin, |
| 1:30.9 | who once said, I have as much authority as the Pope. |
| 1:33.6 | I just don't have as many people who believe it. |
| 1:36.3 | Right. |
| 1:36.9 | So this would be a good example of a case in which a consensus in a field is not enough |
| 1:43.2 | to make it appropriate for us to conclude that they're |
| 1:47.9 | correct. So this is something that I want to talk about. And you raised the issue of expert consensus |
... |
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