In The Field

AAAS: Whom can you trust?

A wise Nature editor once chided me for referring to someone as an ‘expert’. “One man’s expert is another man’s charlatan,” he told me.

Words to live by, and also the topic of a session here at AAAS on evaluating experts. Reporters fret over this all the time: How do you know which source to trust? Is the rebel going against accepted dogma brilliant or a quack? And even when you’ve found what seems to be consensus, what if everyone in a specific scientific community is making the same dangerous assumption?

I didn’t find much novel insight into these issues at the session, and that’s hardly anyone’s fault – these aren’t the sorts of questions that have clear answers. But Sheila Jasanoff of Harvard discussed the issue of trust and had an interesting quote: “What we’ve done in the past to produce trust is to contain debates.” It reminded me of all the times I’ve heard people advise scientists to distill their message down to a sound bite and leave those caveats behind. That advice has always made me feel a little queasy, although I do understand the motivation.

Anyway, a representative from AAAS presented an interesting solution to the problem of scientific experts used in court. These experts are typically hired by either the defense or the prosecution, leaving them open to accusations that they’ve adjusted their analysis to best suit the folks who are paying them. AAAS has been working on a program to provide court-appointed experts that wouldn’t have to soil their hands by associating with either side. Sounds pretty cool – you can check it out in more detail here: https://www.aaas.org/spp/case/case.htm.

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