5.6: Safeguards

The following steps will help us spot, and so resist, fallacious appeals to expertise.

1. Actively evaluate claims and arguments that matter to you.
2. Check the alleged source’s credentials and track record.
3. Check multiple and independent sources, particularly if the stakes are high and/or the issue is important to you.
4. Determine whether it is in the experts’ self-interest to deceive us (e.g., are they trying to sell us something?).
5. Determine whether there is some special reason why they might be mistaken on this occasion (even if they are usually credible).
6. Develop your own expertise.
7. Try to look at the issue from multiple perspectives.

Tune in

One of the greatest obstacles to evaluating potential sources of information is that we often listen to them with our mind out of gear. Many people for many different reasons want us to follow their suggestions, and this works best if we go along, passively, mindlessly, without really thinking about what they are saying. Habit, routine, and laziness encourage this. It requires an effort to think about things. But the more we do it, the easier it will become.

Check the Track Record

Check the alleged expert’s credentials and track record. If they have a history of making mostly true claims in an area, that gives us a reason to trust their claims in this instance. If several of your friends have had good experiences with a doctor when they had colds, it’s sensible to go to that doctor when you have a cold. If Jalen’s claims about which courses to take have always been wrong, he’s not a good person to ask the next time around. The track records of many publications are reasonably good, whereas the track record of the National Inquirer is not. Checking a track record can be difficult, but if the issue is one that really matters to us, it is worth trying to do.

Check Multiple and Independent Sources

When you are uncertain whether an expert’s claim is correct, it is prudent to check several sources. Get a second opinion (and, if the issue really matters to you, a third or a fourth). But you must take care to find sources that are independent of each other. There is little point in checking several copies of today’s Washington Post to be sure that the first copy was right. And if you ask six different people about the date of the final exam, but they all got their information from Wilbur (who misread the syllabus), you will still be misinformed.

When independent sources agree, you can have more confidence in their joint testimony than you could in the testimony of any one of them alone. In many cases, it is difficult to find multiple sources, but on the internet, where credentials and track record can be difficult to assess, finding multiple authorities is often quite easy. Indeed, you can use the internet to get a second opinion after someone you know has given you a first.

Consider Possible Biases

Ask yourself whether there is any reason why the alleged expert might be biased about this case. Do they have a financial stake in it? In the case of celebrity endorsements and infomercials, the biases are usually obvious. The person stands to make a fast buck from us if we believe what they tell us. But in other cases, vested interests may be less obvious. Indeed, in some cases, the vested interest may simply be the desire to seem right.

Consider Possible Sources of Error

Can you think of any reasons why the expert might make an honest mistake in this case? Might they have some sort of blind spot about it (as many of us do when it comes to our loved ones)? Are there reasons why the observations or tests might not be reliable (perhaps they are a good lab technician, but the police did a sloppy job gathering the DNA samples)?

Develop Your Own Expertise

In cases that really matter to you, you need, to some degree, to become your own expert. It is increasingly clear, for example, that people need to learn more about healthy lifestyles and how to manage their own medical conditions. In doing this we should of course rely on experts, but we have more firsthand knowledge about ourselves than others do, and we have a greater interest in obtaining accurate information about it.

Consider Multiple Perspectives

One of the best ways to avoid flawed reasoning is to think about the issue from more than one point of view. This strategy is less relevant to testimony than it will be to some of the things we will study later, but it is still useful to try to put yourself in the position of the source you are evaluating. Can you think of other perspectives from which the expert’s claims would seem less plausible? Would they have some reason to make this claim if it weren’t true?

In short, the key is to find good authorities who don’t have any reasons to misrepresent the facts. If the matter is important to us (as some medical questions are), we should also try to obtain several independent opinions from different sources. And we should always tune in when the topic is relevant to us. As we work our way through the course, we will find certain sorts of errors that we all tend to make. In cases where such errors are likely, it is important not to accept someone’s claim too quickly. But before turning to errors, we will devote a chapter to one of the most important sources of information in today’s world: the internet.