Let the new knowledge in


Once a person has been announced as an expert, they lose the impetus to use wisdom wisely

Annalisa Barbieri
Saturday February 9, 2008
The Guardian

The five men boarded the flight from Sardinia to London. They were all members of a steel band, but because the flight was full they had to mostly sit apart. They were ordinary passengers, on their way home to spend New Year's Eve with their families. One was blind, and his colleague, whom he was sitting next to, was reading him the football scores.

However, this perfectly innocent scene held intrigue for a fellow passenger - no normal person but an expert: a psychology professor. He had seen the men in the departure lounge sitting together, now they were dispersed. The man pretending to be blind was now reading the paper. They were clearly terrorists! He alerted the pilot (I can imagine what he said: "I'm a psychology professor; these men are terrorists!") and the men were escorted off, and not allowed back on, even when they proved they were entirely innocent. In the event, the band did not get back to their families until January 2, after travelling to Italy and London, via sleeping rough in a Liverpool bus shelter.

Four years ago, a mother gave birth to a child and died a few hours later. Instead of being given an anaesthetic as an epidural, straight into her spine, she had been given it through a drip into her arm. The midwife who made the error repeatedly denied making the mistake, and because of course she never made the mistake, she could show no remorse. The hospital took more than a year to admit there had been a mix-up. Clearly, experts don't make mistakes.

In Paris, seven senior French doctors and former health officials are standing trial for manslaughter and fraud related to the death of more than 100 people they allegedly caused to be infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Three stories, from just one day in this week's news, of experts getting it very wrong. And what about the famous, entirely tragic case of the recent past? Sally Clark was wrongfully convicted of the death of her sons after one expert asserted that the likelihood of two sudden infant deaths in the same house was "one in 73 million", and another submitted an incorrect pathology report. Later, to add insult to injury, an expert in Munchausen by proxy decided, simply by watching a television programme, that it was actually Sally Clark's husband who did it. God save us from experts.

The problem with being an expert is that once it's been announced you know it all, it almost ceases to matter what you say. Because you're an expert. Some perfectly sane, intelligent people fail to question the questionable, because if a statement is prefixed with "the expert's view is ...", they think it escapes analysis. Even without tipping into real tragedy, who hasn't had the experience of an arrogant doctor who won't listen because he knows best. And don't even get me started on TV doctors, who belong to a whole special world of their own, the TV expert. Or the teacher who won't countenance you having an opinion on your own child because - look, she's the educational expert. Or the priest who actually thinks he's God?

These people don't let new knowledge in, they don't allow for variables, they don't listen. They don't need to, after all. I wonder at which point experts decide they no longer need to learn, because they already know it all?

The people I know with real specialisms and expertise - and yes, I am grateful for all the learned people in the world that use their wisdom wisely - purposely avoid the word expert. In turn, I avoid the opinions of experts; experts are rigid, and the one thing a keen mind must have is flexibility. The cleverest people I've met are also the best listeners. A really intelligent person is humble, and realises that knowledge is never finite.

annalisa.barbieri@guardian.co.uk


Comments
sbgman

February 9, 2008 2:07 AM

The really strange thing to me in reading this column is that I am a scientist...one would assume one of the "experts" (at least within my particular field of study), yet one of the things we scientists learn (or should learn) early on is that even the gurus and giant names can be wrong and their opinions/ideas should be questioned. Somehow, we seem to have mixed up "experts" with expertise. It often comes down to "Show me the data", and if you can't, be quiet!

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RogerINtheUSA

February 9, 2008 2:09 AM

What would happen if the UK's most prestigious Medical Journal's expert reviewers were to decide that the MMR jab causes autism?

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Auric

February 9, 2008 3:09 AM

Clearly applicable to Williams. `Listen to me, I know about gods, religions and things like that.` To borrow from George Orwell - No ordinary person could be such a fool.

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jakebylo

February 9, 2008 3:44 AM


this is an astoundingly ridiculous column - possibly setting a new record for the Guardian website - gave me an extended case of the "dancing eyes", especially the smug Aunty-knows-best last paragraph.

The columnist has absolutely no evidence that the few stories she cites (incidentally, a handful of situations out of the many millions of actions/decisions that designated experts (expertise is typically formally designated by official qualifications and other marks of recognition, and not merely someone declaring themselves an expert) in an enormous number of fields carry out every day) involved people with expertise who were arrogant and conceited and closed to new knowledge... and even if they really were, she has no evidence that this led to the mistake (And if an expert who had been involved in a serious mistake at work were found personally responsible, there are a whole range of possible explanations for their mistake - ranging from say, really bad luck to say, drunkenness due to personal problems at home - many explanations which can't be attributed to the blanket accusation of arrogance )

This article's accusations/character assassinations against these people in the cited cases is purely speculative and groundless, just so another snootily self-satisfied and self-righteous column can be written. (does the columnist really avoid the opinions of all experts? what an impractical way of living life.)

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goldengate

February 9, 2008 4:05 AM

And then there is George W. Bush, the expert decider in chief by virtue of having being installed in the Presidency, overrule all experts, because he alone knows what is best and his like minded other experts , in particular his Cabinet, that servers at his pleasure just tow the same line. The world should be congratulated to have so much wisdom.

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parallaxview

February 9, 2008 4:24 AM

Whoa Annalisa, just checked out your profile: seamstress to the Queen Mother, fashion PR, fishing correspondent, columnist, author, co-founder of the progressive parenting website.

Jack of all trades, master of ...?

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Mujokan

February 9, 2008 5:21 AM

One problem from two years ago, another problem from four years ago, and a third problem from twenty years ago. Luckily the writer isn't an expert on experts, or I wouldn't have found this column so convincing.