amuser, this is so, so, so painfully true! I discuss this phenomenon quite frequently with my wife - I didn’t know it had a name, lol! Although unlike Crichton, I would extend it to other parts of life. For example, we tend to take what a professional says at face value, when we are not professionals of that area ourselves - we put undue amount of trust into them. So, my area is the entertainment business - and when I read something said by some entertainment business figure, I tend to look at it quite critically, because I can see how it misses all sorts of nuances if it’s not actually entirely wrong. But I don’t have the same degree of distrust of lawyers, since I am not a lawyer. Yet the reality is, that in every field, whether medicine, law, engineering or whatnot, the highly competent are very few, and the majority are mediocre with a good number being outright bad. So if you come across the “average” doctor, you should trust them as much or as little as you would a professional in YOUR area of expertise. Most people are average - average doctors, average lawyers, average researchers etc. - and that can be problematic to say the least.
This also pertains to journalists. Most journalists are going to be “average” - how likely is it, that the average journalist reporting on an area they have little knowledge of, will get things substantially right, especially if the subject matter is abstruse, difficult or controversial? Odds are that they will not do a 100% accurate job. They’re just your average “X”, whatever the X is, journalist, lawyer, doctor, mtorc1 researcher.
People think that scientists are somehow immune to this “average” rule - hardly. We on this board who attempt to read up on and examine countless medical studies are after all acutely aware of how problematic vast numbers of studies are - and that is not even mentioning the actively malign, like the epic amounts of fraud in so many papers.
Relying on others for your research is always a fraught affair. It is a hard reality, that we have no choice but to operate on a level of trust, experience, heuristic rules of thumb, principles and general rules when making decisions about many areas of life. We can’t be specialists in each and every facet of life - medical, legal, financial, car mechanic, airline pilot and candy maker. We have no choice but to rely on the expertise of others. Which is why we have to prioritise where we put our energies in. I am willing to trust the mechanic without taking the car apart for myself, I pick the mechanic based on recommendations and personal experience of the person, watching, etc. - I am not a car specialist. But in some areas, sorry, but I do have to take a deep dive and can’t just “take their word for it” - it’s my very life/health… I can always get another car, I can’t get another body. I also take charge of my finances and have no use for a “financial advisor” - money is too important in life to let someone else make financial decisions for you, I decided that I have no choice but to take a deep dive into that area if I don’t want to end up living under a bridge.
The Renaissance was the last time a well-educated person could be on top of all current knowledge that the civilization offered, a la Leonardo da Vinci. Today, you’re lucky if you are competent in one narrow area - the rest is luck, intuition, trust and hope.
