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Comment by graemep | Hacker News Reader

A good writer who can put together stuff, interview different experts, etc. can put together something very good. I can think of plenty of books like that. They cite research and quote experts.

It has some advantages over a book written by a single expert: most importantly, it can cover multiple points of view and cover controversies more impartially.

One of the problems with expert views is that they often fail to distinguish between what is well proven, what is a current consensus because its a best guess, and what is a personal opinion/pet theory.

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> One of the problems with expert views is that they often fail to distinguish between what is well proven, what is a current consensus because its a best guess, and what is a personal opinion/pet theory.

I was in the academia for some years and didn't find in my field any expert that was incapable of distinguishing well proven Vs opinion. That might be the defining characteristic of an "expert".

Maybe we just have different definitions of expert? To you and expert is someone who just defends his pet theory, and to me an expert is the same as the rest of the scientific world understands it.

Confusing someone whose job is to push their pet theory with an expert makes you sound like you've had very little exposure to science.

To play devil's advocate, I think there is some merit to their point. A common criticism against modern academia is that so much of the low hanging fruit has been addressed, that to be an expert working on the actual frontier means your "leaf node" of focus/progress is so so specific, that it's not at all uncommon to be somewhat blinded to the broader consensus/lower resolution version of the greater tree of knowledge.

The experts of the kind to which you're presumably referring, who are much more tapped in to the whole state of a broad branch of knowledge, often end up being more "science communicators" than people on the frontier of research. The thing is, though, that these "science communicators" often end up being (or start off being) more akin to a papers/Wikipedia jockey than a credentialed academic actively working in the field. So in that sense, someone who "knows a lot about dinosaurs and can effectively write about them as the broader field currently perceives them" need not necessarily be a credentialed expert.

Science communicators are typically the people who aren't good enough to do research.

I can tell that the ideas you're conveying don't come from your own experience, I'm guessing you heard them from a "science communicator"?

By contrast, I do have direct experience, and the best people were doing research, not talking to the media, and they were perfectly aware what kind of evidence exists for which ideas - in fact more than anything else, this is what being an expert is.

Talking to the media is a different job than being a researcher, I'm sure you'll agree. What I would like to understand is where this belief of yours come from, that the less knowledgeable people will have a better high level picture? Wouldn't the best high level people come from experts who make an effort to learn about those aspects?

> I can tell that the ideas you're conveying don't come from your own experience, I'm guessing you heard them from a "science communicator"

An add hominem attack. So was your reply to me.

> I was in the academia for some years and didn't find in my field any expert that was incapable of distinguishing well proven Vs opinion.

They are capable of it, but they do not always bother to do it when talking to a non-academic audience.

One example that comes to mind is how advice on diet has changed over the years because advice was given (e.g. avoid dietary cholesterol) that was not well proven. Another was the introduction to a fascinating book I read a few years ago on the complexities of evolution (e.g. genetic changes with multiple effects, gene transfer, etc.). In the introduction the authors explained that colleagues had pressured them not to publish because it differed from the simple model of evolution taught in schools so would encourage creationists.

Economists are often biased towards their own political opinions.

> advice was given that was not well proven

I don't know about the specific case you're talking about. However, the scientific method is that when new evidence comes in, experts update their beliefs. What do you think they should do instead?

The problem in one case was that they gave advice with insufficient evidence. That proves my point about failure to distinguish between well proven facts and best guess consensus opinions.

In the other case they were arguing for deliberately impeding the sharing knowledge because the hoi polloi could not understand it. They wanted the public told what was good for them, not the truth.

So a scientist was dishonest and/or made a mistake. What's your point, that journalists aren't dishonest and dont make mistakes? I have no idea what you're arguing for.

I can tell you what my point is: an expert will know more than a journalist. I have no idea how this can be controversial. If it wasn't the case, the journalist would be the expert and it would become true by definition.

As for exposure to science. I think Max Planck had rather a lot, and he said:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ...

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle

The idea that experts are super-humanly free from bias is ridiculous.

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