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In 1979, there was a partial meltdown at a nuclear plant on Three Mile Island, in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. I was a young newspaper editor at the time, and I was caught up in coverage of the resulting debate about whether nuclear power could ever be safe. I have long forgotten the details of that episode, except for one troubling thought that occurred to me in the middle of it: The experts we relied on to tell us whether a given design was safe, or indeed whether nuclear power generally was safe, were people with advanced degrees in nuclear engineering and experience running nuclear plants. That is, we were relying on people who made their living from nuclear power to tell us if nuclear power was safe. If they started saying out loud that anything about the nuclear enterprise was iffy, they risked putting themselves out of business.
I mention this not because I think the engineers lied to the public. I don't. Nor do I think nuclear power is so dangerous it should be rejected as an energy source. I mention it because it shows how hard it can be to make sense of information from experts.
Trust in institutions and expertise has taken a lot of knocks in the last decade. Can society recover it? Are we all called to a higher effort to vet the information we are given, or is there another, better remedy?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fadrian on Tuesday August 29 2017, @11:20AM (2 children)
You either trust experts and data or you take your chances with "common sense" and your own ignorance. Most of the time the experts and data are a better choice.
That is all.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Tuesday August 29 2017, @02:40PM (1 child)
Except then you get shite like this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/us/stop-bashing-gmo-foods-more-than-100-nobel-laureates-say.html [nytimes.com]
Sounds great: sounds official!
Until you dig below the surface:
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/07/04/1249257 [soylentnews.org]
You get a big announcement about "Experts say...."
But then you dig and you find that they ain't really experts, or they have a bias, or they have an agenda. Or they've been bought.
I think it goes to show you JUST because these nobel winners allowed their name to be attached to the whole "GMO's are safe" thing. Most of them probably know NOTHING about GMO's, but "Hey, i'm a nobel winner, and you just stroked my junk enough to make me say 'Hey GMO's are safe!'"
Some experts are garbage: in the way that in old wars, Lord so-and-so bought his rank of Major even though he'd never seen battle before. Because he was a Lord, he was supposed to know more about war than a rank and file peasant.
You can't just trust them because they are supposed to be experts. You need to be cynical and question.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday August 29 2017, @03:48PM
Allowed, hell! I've had no end of stupid, lying scumbags wanting to claim that I said what they want to hear, approved some terrible plan or design, because I have credentials they feel are impressive. They'll happily push a pen into my hand and move my arm to make me write a signature, if I let them. When I won't play along, I get threats, starting with vague ones about how I'm not being a "team player", but soon getting more and more specific in case I'm such a moron I can't understand that they'll fire me unless I change my mind. A few times I've had to deal with them just going ahead and claiming I approved something that I did not approve.
It's worse to go along to get along. Then my reputation very quickly becomes mud, and they fire me anyway because my approval is no longer worth spit and I'm useless for impressing others. Just one disastrous project is all it takes, and you're toast. Plenty of competitors out there ready to cut your throat the moment they see a weakness, see a project that can be branded a failure even if it actually is a success. All it has to do is fail to succeed fast enough, and, bam, it's a failure and you're out. Perception matters.
Bias is a very persistent, insidious problem. Very hard for anyone to be unbiased when they have a personal stake in the outcome. I see that one all the time with medical doctors. I know Big Pharma's pill pushers bombard them with messages, explicit and implicit, and suasions to prescribe more patented, brand name drugs.