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If you don't have the ability or time or money to figure something out yourself, who are you going to trust? That an expert could be wrong and a 10-year old could be correct are not going to make me start asking ten-year-olds advice about global warming, or to diagnose what is wrong with my car, or why I have indigestion, or how to manage my retirement portfolio.
As people with less authority, or fewer credentials, or less experience interact with those who have the authority, credentials, experience I would hope the authority figures would be honest, talk about uncertainty, explain the ways that less experienced scientists misunderstand the data or the theories, etc.
I would hope the less experienced would have sufficient experience to follow the argument, understand why the authority says what she says, and be able to make a judgment about the likelihood that the expert is correct.
There is another group of people who don't even feel there is a right and wrong. It's a matter of who is more persuasive. I once suffered under a dean who was a philosophy major in college, got a PhD in philosophy, then went to law school, but quit law school to become dean. He was proud of his logic and reasoning skills, and especially proud of his debating skills. He liked to exclaim that anyone would give him any side of a debate on any topic and he could win the debate hands-down. Originally I thought he was only boasting about his intelligence and debating skills. But later I came to realize he genuinely did not believe in absolute truth or reality. He especially disliked scientists for thinking they had a corner on truth. He, like many others of this ilk, had an agenda and would use his debating skills to discredit and walk all over anyone who stood in his way. Needless to say, he and I did not get along. I am still here, and he is long gone, but it was a difficult struggle.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the
reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe
that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible
reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment
principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the
world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now,
and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act
again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and
that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and
you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
I guess where I am going with this is that I think appeal to authority is necessary because there are many, many situations where we have to vote or make a decision about something for which we do not have the ability, or time, or money to do the research ourselves. That's why we specialize and have experts. Unfortunately, even if we decide we need specialization and experts, we still have a bundle of problems.
What do we do about persuasive people like the former dean who have an agenda that does not involve the truth?
The fact that some of these people are scientists, coupled with some truly incompetent scientists, have led the public to give scientists about the same level of trust as they give used-car salesmen (so I've heard).
It seems the typical citizen can't trust the politicians, can't trust businessmen, and feel they can't trust the scientists.
On the issue of global warming, it appears to me there are quite a few people (politicians, businessmen, and some scientists) with agendas that have nothing to do with the search for truth. Then there is another group who are searching for the truth but don't think we have it yet. Naomi Oreskes says the scientific community clearly has reached consensus that we know the truth (global warming is occurring and humans are casuing it). But the discussion on this list would seem to indicate this group is not there yet. Oreskes clearly says she is talking about the "climate experts" being in consensus that people are causing global warning. That brings me back to the original questions about authority. If Oreskes is correct that the climate experts are in agreement that human-caused global warming is occuring, what happens next? Do we believe them and act accordingly, or do we drag our feet on taking action until the experts have fully convinced the rest of the scientific community they are correct? Assuming they are correct, what will it take, and how long will it take for them to convince the rest of us? Do we have that much time?