John Denker has responded to my questions by saying I am asking about a form
of "appeal to authority." He goes on to restate a paragraph we've seen
before about an expert's statement being wrong if it's wrong and a
10-year-old non-expert being right if he's right.
Yes, of course I'm asking about how much we trust authority; that's the
point of my questions. And of course an expert can make wrong statements,
either accidentally or intentionally, and of course a 10-year old can make a
lucky guess and be correct. How does that help the discussion?
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.
As John implies, journalists typically don't have the background to do this,
and typically don't have any interest in doing this. I believe John is
correct that this is "a very, very, very serious matter."
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.
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. Perhaps on top of
all that... they don't care.
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?
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton University
1 University Drive
Bluffton, OH 45817
419.358.3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu