Another article making the rounds complaining about pandemic "epistemic trespassing", unironically quoting a medical expert who has adamantly & baselessly claimed masks would induce false sense of security—to great harm. For "trust the experts" to work, experts need to deliver.
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Nobody is an expert on this virus (yet). There are experts on other viruses, or other pandemics. That expertise can be useful. It can also lead to bias, since this virus is different from these other viruses in various ways. The best experts are mindful of these limitations.
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Meh, as
@michaelmina_lab says, this is a textbook coronavirus in many aspects. Japan and South Korea aren't doing mind-reading. - Show replies
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Right. It can simultaneously be the case (and I think now is) that society is being hurt by failing to credit expertise adequately, yet some experts overstep their fields, arrogate to themselves questions that are moral or political, and/or undervalue lay contributions.
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Of course. It's all happening at once. There is expert failure; there is illegitimate epistemic trespassing; there is grift and ideology; there is usurpation by experts of what is actually political questions that need public discussion...
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I wonder how much of the skepticism of expertise stems from the appalling failure of nearly all economists to foresee the entirely predictable and predicted economic and financial crisis due to an enormous housing bubble.
@DeanBaker13 was one of the very, very few exceptions. -
It probably also matters the whole economics profession got a "who could have known?" amnesty. No one suffered any career consequences for missing the worst downturn since Great Depression. As an economist, I believe in incentives: lower pay for people who do their jobs badly.
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