A recent Scientific American reviews of “Rethinking Expertise” by Harry Collins and Robert Evans got me thinking about the problem of “experts” and expert advice.
From the review:
This slim book by Harry Collins and Robert Evans offers a conceptual typology of “expertises.” The authors invent a plural form of the word to suggest that more than one type exists. They also identify a core or central type—contributory expertise, which they define as the possession of sufficient skill and tacit knowledge to participate fully in an activity; the prototype is the ability to perform experiments in a specialized science.
…The book’s central focus is interactional expertise—a “parasitical” form characterized by an ability to “talk the talk” without being able to “walk the walk.”…[the Interactional Expert] has acquired an ability to discuss that subject in a way that passes for expertise, even though he is unable to perform the relevant experiments or work through the mathematics…Interactional expertise sometimes proves adequate for practical communicative purposes. In other words, it is sometimes possible to know (or at least to speak in a way that seems knowledgeable) without possessing the relevant know-how.
Taken by itself, this insight might seem unremarkable, but it does have implications for public and organizational efforts to understand, regulate and manage specialized knowledge. It also can shed light on methodological problems that sociologists and anthropologists face when they study practices with which they are initially unfamiliar.
Many modern social institutions rely on expertise, and difficulties can arise when nonexperts are charged with making important legal, political, medical or economic decisions on the basis of expert advice. Jurors, government officials, voters, consumers, patients and, at some point, all of us can be puzzled about what to think or do when faced with confusing, often contradictory, expert claims about environmental and safety hazards, climate change, healthful diets, possible remedies for disease, and many other personally and politically consequential matters.” From: http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/content2/2008/4/know-how
The review goes on to severely criticise the book, but I am intrigued that there is serious work on classifying types of experts, and I now hope, perhaps some tools and best practices being defined to help with the problem of non-experts having to made decisions based on expert advice.
This problem arises daily in the business work, typically when technical experts advise on what is and is not possible, usually in response to sales and marketing questions.
I have repeatedly witnessed technologists discouraging product development proposals or denying technological capabilities, often just because they did not approve of of the proposal or it was not easy, not because it was really undoable.
The best work around I have found so far when dealing with Geeks is to appeal to Geek pride and get fellow Geeks - often from another team or company - to demonstrate or testify that the “impossible” is in fact easy for them to do.
It is a form of Peer Review, but applied to Technical Operations. In its simplest form it is known as getting a second opinion.
Whilst you are there, you might also want to check out their review of “Objectivity” by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison.
{ 0 comments… add one now }