ROGER SIMON: Say Goodbye to Experts (Mostly).
What in the Sam Hill is an expert, and why should we trust them?
Personally, I cringe when I see in a headline—in this paper and virtually everywhere else—the phrase “experts say.” My back immediately goes up and I do my best Yogi Berra imitation: “Sez who?”
This is especially true when the name of the expert is not specified. In some quarters (not here, as far as I can tell) it is deliberately omitted. The use of “experts say” then is often just a cover for what the journalist him or herself really thinks—a method of passing off opinion as news.
We see that almost every day at The New York Times and The Washington Post under such rubrics as “someone in a position to know.” Who, exactly? Well, that’s for me to know and for you to find out.
Some areas of expertise have long evinced skepticism. Five minutes watching a half-dozen economists on CNBC or Fox Business predict the direction of the stock market is a perfect example.
Even better might be the “foreign policy expert.” Who paying attention cannot recall decades of misguided nonsense emanating from Middle East experts after the Oslo Accords that never amounted to anything, or even exacerbated the violence?
Then along came the galumphing Donald Trump, expert in Fifth Avenue real estate, I suppose, who employed some common sense—you might say street smarts—allying the Gulf States with Israel against their common threat, Iran. And, voila—a huge step forward to peace.
The pandemic, needless to say, has thrown us all into the arms of warring medical and scientific experts. It has been quite a battle—much of it, I am pleased to say, engaged in with more clarity and usefulness than elsewhere on these digital pages.
One of the few positive things that has emerged from the COVID-19 awfulness is that our suspiciousness of experts has grown considerably, as it should. The intelligent person now knows to look past the label (institutes led, doctorates earned) on the supposed expert—who had a fancier vitae than Dr. Anthony Fauci?—to the true character, knowledge, and intentions of the human being beneath that label.
Related: The Suicide of Expertise.