Photo by Alev Takil on Unsplash
Author Expertise (People & Context Part 3)
“Just trust the experts” is the wrong path to take. But simply deciding to ignore them can lead us down rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and misinformation.
-
There can be pros and cons to an author being formally trained or having a career in a discipline that's relevant to the written work. The pros usually outweigh the cons.
-
In general, it's a good sign for the author to have training and experience in a relevant field of study. But, it can be hard for non-experts (you and me in most cases) to tell whether an author or speaker is an expert.
-
Authors who are outsiders to the field (i.e., non-experts) can offer insightful and critical perspective but also have a greater likelihood of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and missing key stuff.
Assessing the author's expertise is important because we don't want to risk making important judgments and arguments that are based on an appeal to false authority. We take significant risks if we update our views based on the opinions of someone who lacks the authority to write or speak on a subject. Here are some key questions to ask:
-
Has the author been formally trained in a field of relevance to the subject matter?
-
What level of education did they attain in the relevant field of study?
-
Is the author an academic or practitioner in a relevant field or are they an outside observer, such as a journalist, possibly having had little formal education in the subject?
There can be pros and cons to formal training or having a career in a discipline that's relevant to the written work. It goes without saying that an author with expertise is more likely to have an accurate and complete sense of the literature on the topic (though this isn't always the case). However, what's often not intuitive is that being embedded in a field can also result in bias. For instance, it may be hard to stray from or criticize views that are prominent among one's colleagues.
As such, there are also benefits of being an outsider to a field of study. For instance, an outsider, such as a journalist, may engage in meticulous research, present the material from a novel and insightful angle, or offer perspective not generally seen among members of the field. They may also have greater freedom to criticize theory and research from the field. In part, that's because they're not be putting themselves at risk of disapproval or rejection by peers to the same extent as those who are members of the field.
Not to go unnoticed, writers who are not academics or practitioners in a particular field of study can be, and often are, experts in the area. They may have a background in the field but have since left to pursue a different path (e.g., journalism). Look into not just their current job, but also their educational background, previous work experience, and what they've written about in the past.
At reputable sites, like many online magazines, finding author information is often easy. For instance, at the digital magazine Aeon, each article includes a short blurb on the author, including institutional affiliations and a link to the author's main page at the site, which contains other articles they've written for Aeon and sometimes links to their websites and social media.
If the publication doesn't make this kind of information easily accessible, look up the author using a search engine. You might find their writings in other places that do offer author info. You might also find them on social media or institutional websites. They may also have a personal website you can check out. If you can't find any information about the author, including their previous works or their credentials online, it might be time to question whether they're properly equipped for the job.
What isn't so easy, though, is actually judging their expertise. If we as readers lack expertise, we will also tend to be missing the awareness of what knowledge and abilities are required for expertise (see also the "Limits of What You Know" section of the Metacognition module). Do you know, for example, what kinds of education and experience might be necessary to qualify someone as an expert in social media or mental health? Alternatively, what would disqualify an author or make them relatively less trustworthy on the subject?
The answers are unlikely to be intuitive to you. The table found at this site may be helpful as a shortcut for roughly assessing whether an author is more or less likely to be an expert. See also this article by C Thi. Nguyen for a thought provoking look at, and expansion on, this issue. Do the best you can with the information you can find and the background knowledge you have at your disposal.
Learning Check