8.6.2: Spotting an Authority's Bias

There is an additional element you have to worry about when someone appeals to authority: bias on the authority's part. First let's define bias: If someone disagrees with you, then they are biased.

More seriously, suppose a British politician claims that there is no significant corruption in Venezuela's oil ministry. The politician's evidence is that the chief oil minister of Venezuela was quoted in last week's Newsweek magazine as saying his ministry is free of corruption. Should you accept the British politician's argument? Well, since you probably don't know anything about Venezuelan oil, isn't the oil minister in a better position to know whether there is corruption in his oil ministry? Yes, and he is the right authority on the matter. Also, you don't have any reason to believe that he was misquoted. So shouldn't you accept the British politician's claim that there is no corruption? No. It is doubtful that this particular authority will tell the truth. Wouldn't he be likely to cover up corruption if it existed?

When someone wants you to accept a claim because a certain authority says it is so, you should ask yourself a few questions:

1. Is the authority an authority on this subject?

2. Do the authorities agree with each other (except for the occasional lone wolf) ?

3. Can the person who appeals to the authority be trusted to report honestly and accurately what the authority said?

4. Can the authority be trusted to tell the truth on this topic?

Only if you get “yes” answers to these questions should you go ahead and accept what the authority says. Still, look before you leap. For example, all of us trust doctors to be authorities. They have expert knowledge that we do not have. What would you do, though, if you ventured into a doctor's office with symptoms of flu and the doctor said, "I'm sorry, but your leg has to come off right away; sign this release form, and we will get you straight into the hospital"? The principle of logical reasoning that you apply at this moment is the following: When the stakes are higher, it is more important to get better evidence before making the decision. Besides, you might learn that the authorities disagree among themselves about whether your leg needs to be removed.

Appeals to expert opinion will sometimes lead you to error. Even experts make mistakes. However, occasional slip-ups by the experts are no reason to quit using authorities as sources of knowledge.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

You’ve been asked to research living conditions in two large American cities, Kansas City and Baltimore, especially whether the cost of living of the average person is greater in one city or the other. The cost of living encompasses the cost of food, housing, car insurance, and other regular expenses. Which person below would be most likely to give you the best answer or the best suggestion on where to go to get the answer?

a. A local building contractor who owns land in Baltimore and who has recently built homes and apartments in both Baltimore and Kansas City.
b. Your college's urban studies professor.
c. Your uncle who lived in Baltimore for five years before moving to Kansas City last year.
d. The personnel director of the company that offered you a new job this week in Kansas City.

Answer

Answer (b). Who is going to know more about the cost of living in a city—somebody who lives there or somebody who studies the city? The urban studies professor is supposed to be an expert who studies cities in all their aspects, and the professor would not have a reason to give a biased answer. If the professor didn't know the answer, he or she would definitely know how to get it. The personnel director might well be biased. Your uncle can speak only from personal experience, as far as you know, and probably doesn't know the statistics; yet the statistics would be a more reliable source of information than firsthand stories even from someone you trust. The building contractor could well know about the cost of housing, but there is little reason to suspect he would know about the cost of other aspects of living in the two cities.

Here is a more difficult question about how to assess whether someone is an authority.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Below is a brief biography of a person, followed by a list of topics. Rank the topics according to her expertise in them, beginning with those on which she would be able to speak with the most authority.

Judy Wilson is currently the director of government documents for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Ten years ago she took a three-year leave from the library to co-direct the census for the Chinese government in Beijing. In 2001 she received a Ph.D. from the Food Research Institute at Stanford University, where she wrote her dissertation on current food consumption patterns throughout China. She published a book four years later on mathematical methods in geography and has published several scholarly articles on the wages and working conditions of women in Asia and Africa.

How can interested members of the public obtain classified research documents as they are declassified and released by the Pentagon and the National Archives?

a. Are Chinese and Indian foods as popular in the U.S. as they were five years ago?
b. Are more women raped in Japan than in China?
c. Are the disabled people in China currently as well fed as those elsewhere in Eastern Asia?
d. Would an accurate census be more difficult to carry out in Ecuador or in Egypt?

Answer

She could speak with the most authority on (a) and the least on (b). She must know when and where classified documents get released by government agencies because her section of the library would most probably be the first to get them of any library in the country. There is no reason to suppose she knows anything special about rape. She might know how to count the disabled people in China, if this were a question on the Chinese census that the government wanted answered (and you don't know whether it is), but there is little reason to suppose she would be interested in how well they eat today, even though she did study food consumption patterns. Regarding (e), she has expert knowledge about how to do a census, but there is no good reason to suppose she could give a decent answer about the problems of conducting one in Egypt versus Ecuador. Regarding (b), she is unlikely to have solid information about the popularity of Chinese and Indian food with U.S. consumers. There is no reason to suspect her degree in food research would provide her with expertise on the current popularity of such foods. So, on this topic she is likely to speak from her own experiences rather than from reliable statistical data. Therefore, the ranking should have (a) on top. Then ranked equally, you’d have (c), (d), (e). Place (b) at the bottom of the ranking.