That well known Brexiteer and bane of UK teachers, Michael Gove, famously declared that Britons “have had enough of experts”. This strikes me as an extremely irresponsible comment, opening the door to all manner of pseudo-scientific nonsense to confuse and mislead the public without constraint. I will explain my concerns through two examples where the input of experts would undoubtedly help prevent misleading views being propagated.
First, some time ago, I watched a documentary by Graham Hancock (writer of the successful Fingerprints of the Gods and similar titles). At the start of this documentary, he dismissed the opinion of expert archaeologists’ and throughout the lengthy presentation of his own theories, he never stated why they disagreed with him. I found this irritating because without knowing why the experts in the field disagree, it is impossible to evaluate Hancock’s own argument however persuasive his rhetoric. Maybe some of his facts are incorrect, or perhaps he has cherry-picked his facts so that they fit his argument whilst ignoring other inconvenient facts that do not fit. I can only assume that professional archaeologists would have supplied clear evidence demonstrating that Hancock’s arguments were false and that is why their views were omitted from the programme. Indeed, Hancock’s own engineer helper would only go so far as “this is worth investigating further” in respect of one particular phenomenon presented – why didn’t this expert go on record offering a firm agreement with Hancock’s view ? My point is that anybody who is thinking critically would immediately spot several major problems with the information that Hancock was promoting.
Prompted by the response of a family member who had uncritically lapped up Hancock’s argument, I determined to find the missing information and looked up what academics have to say about Hancock’s views. It is quite damning – Hancock’s work is referred to as pseudo-science, quasi-religion, cult archaeology, alternative archaeology and similar such labels. An easily accessible chapter of a book available on Google scholar defines it as developing from a long line of writing based on ‘the continued use of myth and wild and…unsustainable assertions about the past ‘ (The Comforts of Unreason, which offers a charitable account of the genre in the book Public Archaeology). This same chapter acknowledges the importance of teaching critical thinking because ‘judging by the sales of books and viewing figures for television programmes, [alternative archaeology] has a larger public audience than mainstream archaeology’ (The Comforts of Unreason). The same point is made with some urgency by Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which I strongly recommend to anybody who would like some guidance on thinking critically (it deals mostly with alien conspiracies but is also applicable to gods, ghosts and all manner of supernatural fantasies). As for Graham Hancock, some of the main holes in his argument are exposed on the Bad Archaeology website which concludes that:
[Hancock] (or his researchers) have either not consulted any scholarly works on the history of cartography, of which there are plenty, or have chosen not to mention their conclusions… We are faced with an inexcusable ignorance about how to conduct adequate research into the past, a naïve belief that it is possible to rely on only one interpretation of the evidence, a failure to establish an hypothesis by showing how his own explains the data better than existing hypotheses or a deliberate suppression of evidence that undermines his hypothesis. Of course, it could well be a combination of these. In any case, the result is that Part I of Hancock’s book is not a scholarly examination of early modern maps, but one that is tendentious whilst trying to give the impression of scholarship to an unsuspecting readership whom he hopes will see the work as well researched because of all those footnotes. (HANCOCK’S FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS, PART I: MISUNDERSTANDING EARLY MODERN CARTOGRAPHY)
That all seems highly consistent with my own concerns and clearly answers the question as to why professional archaeologists’ views were omitted from the documentary.
My second example of the importance of expert opinion is a pro-Creationism pamphlet that claims to analyse the science behind the theory of evolution. What it actually does is to present sufficient scientific detail so that someone who hadn’t studied or understood the science might find the argument convincing and therefore believe that Creationism offers a sound alternative based on scientific facts. However, the scientific evidence and explanations provided are deliberately incomplete and in several instances completely out of date. This particular pamphlet does at least acknowledge that the scientists cited (out of context) agree with the theory of evolution and do not support Creationism. However, no reason is given as to why these scientists find evolution so convincing. My natural response as a critical thinker is to ask ‘why do the experts on evolution reject the persuasively written argument in the pamphlet?’ There clearly must be a good reason and the fact that their view is not presented makes me rightly suspicious of the position that is being promoted (in this case Creationism).
A critical reader who had no knowledge of the science in question would notice that even within the constraints of the pamphlet and its misrepresented and incomplete science, the weight of evidence still favours science over the Creationism that is being promoted. This is because if you ignore the rhetorical devices that the writer cleverly employs, the actual evidence in favour of Creationism is limited to the story of creation in the Bible (no more reliable or convincing than any other ancient creation myth) and the feeble fallacious assertion that all gaps in physical scientific evidence can be unquestioningly filled by God. It turns out, in fact, that this whole pamphlet is no more than an appeal to the depressingly common argument from ignorance, which goes like this: science can’t yet answer all questions (e.g. about the origins of life) so it must be wrong and that means God is the only possible explanation. Or more simply, ‘I don’t understand science, therefore God did it.’ This argument, as the label argument from ignorance suggests, is utterly pathetic and marks its user as either an uncritical ignoramus or someone who is endeavouring to exploit such ignoramuses. Certainly, such deeply unimpressive arguments from ignorance will not convince anybody practised in thinking critically.
Once again, to raise awareness of the irresponsible damage caused by the sort of non-argument promoted by this brochure, and to harden your critical defences against such nonsense, I recommend Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
I was considering another blog post ripping The Origin of Life pamphlet apart but another quick Google revealed that someone has already done it. So for now, I will return to Gove’s daft remark and conclude by stating that whether Britons have had enough of them or not, WE CERTAINLY DO NEED EXPERTS! We need them to help protect us from pseudo-scientific nonsense that is marketed as evidence-based fact. Apart from misleading people, such pseudo-science also has the damaging effect of channelling the public’s money away from real scientific endeavour and into the pockets of charlatans. To think that Gove was once the UK’s government minister in charge of education!! Appalling!