Note to my Yarns from the Farm readers—this is another in a new series for our local newspaper. I hope you enjoy it. Nan
Countering disinformation is less a war, and more a series of duels—each of us pitted against bad actors who are acting in their own best interests rather than ours. Winning these duels requires a suite of weapons as well as the skill to wield them effectively. We’ve talked about bringing awareness and objectivity when deciding whether a claim is suspicious. We also need help from experts.
Choosing your experts, though, is one of the trickiest parts of defending against disinformation. We often think of science disinformation in terms of someone claiming things that aren’t true. An equally dangerous form, though, is claiming something ISN’T true when the evidence suggests that it is.
Notice how carefully I phrased that last sentence. Science almost never—maybe really never—proves that something is true. It is much more likely to prove the opposite—that a theory or hypothesis can’t be true based on experimental evidence. This is the nature of scientific discovery.
In between the endpoints of true or not true is the whole process of discovery, in which evidence is used to formulate a theory, and then further evidence is used to disprove or refine that theory, or create a new one. Scientific research—and interpretation—is a dynamic process. This means that something held to be likely, based on evidence a while ago, may very well become less likely based on the evolving evidence.
So, how to pick your duelling expert in the realm of science? The following discussion is taken from an article in The Age by Liam Mannix: Which Experts Should We Trust.
Liam starts with a pyramid of scientific evidence, shown above, which places “expert opinion” in the weakest category. He says, “Good science counts on reducing the effect of humans, who are prone to errors and biases. An expert opinion is – hopefully – grounded in evidence, but it’s also influenced by the expert’s own bias and judgment.
In science, working out who holds expertise is down to published papers. They are the coin of the realm—who is publishing the best work in the best journals? Scientists know who the best of the best are, and who the bozos are. It’s a bit like how a plumber knows who the best plumbers are, or how you know who are the real experts in your field.” Liam suggests the following questions to ask when choosing which expert to rely on:
Does this expert hold a position of expertise directly relevant to the issue?
Has this person published research that is directly relevant to the issue?
Does this person have rank or status within their field?
Is this person clearly speaking to the evidence?
Does this person have an obvious agenda that would bias their judgment? Do they hold other biases?
As it happens, Liam’s article used the same example I did in the previous Science Insights article: Robert Malone and Josh Rogan, the podcast host.
From Liam’s article: “So … should we trust Dr Malone? What about Joe Rogan? We can answer this question more easily now. First, other than on matters of UFC [martial arts championship] or marijuana, Mr Rogan is not a recognised expert, so we don’t need to worry too much about his opinions.”
”Dr Malone is a different kettle of fish. He does have some level of expertise in basic mRNA mechanisms, although his public work was a long, long time ago. More recently, he has worked as a vaccine consultant. For the layperson, he’s not easy to dismiss. Here we can look to the opinion of other experts in the field – remember, they have the best idea of who is and is not an expert. The 270 scientists who signed an open letter claiming Dr Malone’s interview was full of ‘false and societally harmful assertions’ gives us a good sense of how other experts feel.”
“If your critics are your fellow specialists, that’s a big problem,”
says Dr Durant, an expert on expertise at the University of Melbourne.