Expert opinion or just more advertising?

Experts are supposed to have some special knowledge. Often this is scientific or medical knowledge. Sometimes it is mathematical or statistical. And more often than not it comes as a result of a Ph.D – a rigorous exercise that exposes the Ph.D to most if not all of the current body of knowledge around a subject.

We turn to experts when we need unequivocal expert statements to make crucial decisions in our lives and avoid death, disease, illness and unhappiness. We crave statements that say, “Wear Sun block to avoid skin cancer,” so we can affect a behavior that allows us and our loved ones to avoid pain and suffering.

Over time it appears that experts go from waffling about “correlation” and “causality” and start to make those kinds of statements. But those kinds of sweeping expert opinions are fraught with trouble. Please let me illustrate.

Recently I had the opportunity to talk with an acquaintance who is also an expert in skin health. We spoke on the day after the results of a study which indicated that sun block has little if any effect on melanoma (skin cancer) were reported in the popular press. In an article for The Columbus Dispatch, Ann Fernholm closes by noting that, “Several scientists actually warn that wearing sunscreen can give users a false sense of security, leading consumers to stay out in the sun longer.”

Now how about that! Yet another possible unintended consequence - the stuff you slather on (yeech!) to keep exposure to the sun from giving you skin cancer may just give you a false sense of security, and encourage you to stay out in the sun longer.

(Just for the record: I am not encouraging your to change your behavior based on my non-expert opinion. You figure it out on your own and live with the consequences of your behavior, just like me.)

You should read all of Ann’s interesting article in The Columbus Dispatch on this study. It can be found here: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/national_world/stories/2008/07/11/Sunscreen_study.ART_ART_07-11-08_A3_QFANOEH.html?sid=101

Unfortunately, my expert acquaintance was unaware of the new study results. When challenged, my acquaintance dismissed the findings, saying that this was “settled science,” and the study "has to be flawed."

I’m not sure I know what “settled science" is – but there sure are a lot of experts touting it these days. The very process of scientific discovery and exploration, what we call The Scientific Method, can prove correlation, but this is a far cry from causality and could be random coincidence.

We may be able to prove correlation using a testable hypothesis, or even many decades of testable hypotheses, but it is a long way down the road to say that you have “settled science,” with absolutely no possibility that randomness is involved to some degree.

As I ruminated on this short conversation (I ruminate too much) I realized that we generally don’t trust experts because they may not be up on the latest material, or they will ignore what disagrees with their expertise; or just as often, we know that they are compensated to hold a particular opinion and they would have to change employment, risk financial distress, or rework their whole ideology in order to say differently.

Whatever the reason, we get a sense that expert statements cannot be trusted. I reflected that my acquaintance's expert opinion on sun block is no better than advertising. Either way, I am making a decision based on the looks or sound of the argument rather than the facts of the argument.

But let’s not forget that we humans are fickle beings. We may not like or trust those who hold and spout unsupported or outdated opinions; but we don’t like the experts who keep saying things like, “That depends,” or “perhaps,” or even, “we are not sure, but …” or “On the other hand …” either. They appear to waffle, it takes forever to hear them out, and their answers don’t give us much assurance.

It may be we that we just have an aversion to expertise and when the question is truly important we should only trust what we find out on our own. What a concept.