John F. Di Leo

Trust the experts? Um, maybe not.

18-Year-Old's Science Reporting Leads Stanford President to Quit
sciencealert.com

Tim adds:

Well let's see; "experts" told us that bumps on the head could explain personality, that blood letting cured "blood poisoning",, that the races are at different evolutionary levels and so we should try to breed out the bad stock (eugenics), They told us ulcers were cause by stress and that you can't lose weight eating all protein. I could go on but I think I've made the point.

As Glenn Greenwald said " ""Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else.”

That is what Academia presents by and large.

I would add that Liberals believe in experts and distrust the common wisdom. Conservatives trust the wisdom of crowds and tend to be distrustful of "experts" because those experts are self-crowned and usually reach the level they are at by self-promotion.

Yes, there are cases of expertise - such as in building a bridge or performing surgery - that the crowd cannot do. But that is quite different from the kinds of expertise we see today, which basically revolves around stuffed shirts bloviating about their personal opinions.

And Academic success is based on novelty. Nobody wants to just be a solid researcher; they want to make a splash. To do that you have to come up with some new and spectacular idea. So the academic is forever reinventing the wheel in an effort to find something to make a name for himself.

And rule by experts leads to a tyranny worse than any in history. People have to be forced to obey them.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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