It’s hard to deny that many societies are having what you might call a ‘crisis of expertise’, and that this has been going on for many years now. Those of us with actual subject matter knowledge and experience in topics that the general public does not will have noticed this – there has really been no way to ignore it. Chemistry, biology, and medicine are perfect examples of fields that many readers of Chemistry World have real expertise in. But doesn’t it sometimes feel like a very mixed blessing, when you see what some people are willing to believe, or what celebrities or politicians are willing to endorse?
As an American, I can claim some additional expertise in the subject of crackpot beliefs themselves. I have, over the years, personally encountered people who believe that the Earth is in fact flat; or that governments are engaged in nefarious programmes of spraying ‘chemtrails’ all over the population from high-altitude airplanes; or that there is no such thing as ‘outer space’ and all evidence to the contrary (astrophotography, satellites, space probes) is part of a deceptive plot. Or (to bring things closer to my own work) that pharmaceutical companies have known how to cure cancer for years, but are simply biding their time until enough people are sick to make revealing said cure as profitable as possible. You will surely have several specimens of your own to add to such a list.
Some years ago I sorted beliefs in general into a few broad categories: Matters for Experts, Just Plain Facts, Clearly Unknowable, and Matters of Opinion. Examples of the first would be pharmacokinetic optimisation; the relationship of quantum mechanics to gravitation; the details of the Riemann Hypothesis – you know the sort of thing. In the Just Plain Facts category are such fraught questions as what day of the week it is, what the empirical formula for glucose might be, whether 117 is a prime number or not, and the like. Clearly Unknowable encompasses things such as ‘When exactly will this radioactive atom of carbon I have in this box decay?’ or (for the rest of you!) ‘What exactly do I have in this sealed box?’ There’s just no way of knowing, and no point in going farther with the question once you’re aware that this is the case. Finally, Matters of Opinion is the roomy argumentative ground of who you’d select for an all-time team in cricket or baseball, which sauce for pasta is the best, what really is the worst movie ever made, et very much cetera. While debating these topics can be fun between friends, they are essentially unresolvable, endless and best avoided in any non-recreational setting.
This is not an original thought, but I think that a great deal of time and effort goes (sometimes without knowing it) into arguing about which of these categories apply. Something one person considers as an obvious fact might be in another person’s unknowable category – such as, for example, which religion will assure one the best position in the afterlife, or whether there is such a thing as ‘the afterlife’ at all. In this case, each person might regard the other’s categorisation alone as fundamentally offensive, even before getting down to any details. But arguing inside the categories is not to be minimised, of course. A common problem is when both parties agree that some subject is, indeed, a matter for experts but disagree profoundly about who qualifies as an expert! The most bitter disputes occur when everyone agrees that the truth is indeed out there and can be reached, but still can’t agree on what it is.
It may seem strange, but I’ve found that analysing arguments by this framework seems to help maintain my equilibrium a bit better. It seems clear that 2026 is a year when we will all need all the help we can get with that, so I offer this scheme for what good it may do. The truth – the very concept of truth – needs all the allies it can get!
No comments yet