Experts Should Be the Sources of Our Information

Oh, how we love to skewer our experts. It makes us feel so... superior. After all, aren't we the country who loves to pick our Presidents based on how much we'd like to have a beer with them? Of course we do. On the other hand, those smart, confident guys, who look and act Presidential are just so elitist!

Just recently, Senator John McCain got all pissy because economists put down his gasoline tax abatement for the summer as a gimmick. He harrumphed that these were the same economists who missed the subprime mortgage mess and besides, "if you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still couldn't reach a conclusion." No attribution to George Bernard Shaw for that hoary chestnut.

On the other hand, let's look at the recent cover story of FORTUNE magazine. It features Meredith Whitney, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., who predicted the credit meltdown a year ago. She called downturns at Citigroup, Bank of America, Lehman Brothers and United Bank of Scotland. Hence, the article's author calls her "the most influential stock analyst in America."

Now she calls for even worse trouble ahead - a big recession down the road. Who am I to believe - an obvious expert with a proven history of success or a legislator given to rehashing a century old gag?

My point is that many of us are so given to believing only what we want to believe that we disregard the people who should really know. Senator McCain was absolutely wrong in his assertion - I read of MANY economists and financial experts were scratching their heads in wonder at the huge run ups in mortgages to overextended home buyers. (Apparently, Phil Gramm was not one of them, but I digress....) And back in the 1990s, those same observers saw that the tech boom was unfounded, correctly predicting its eventual crash.

Why believe the testimonies of Government insiders about the run-up to the war in Iraq when a fat blowhard on the radio who acts as my surrogate blusters otherwise? Let's set the Wayback Machine even further back, Sherman, to the early 1980s, when Meryl Streep raised all kinds of concerns about the chemical Alar in our kids' apple juice. Her high-profile Senate testimony, caused a lot of concern and knitted brows. I grant Ms. Streep the best of intentions, but that particular case turned out to be much ado about nothing. I submit it would have not gone so far had it not been for her celebrity.

The danger is a Gresham's Law of knowledge, where bad information drives out the good. I am hearing this occasionally in Toastmasters' speeches, where up-and-coming speakers are making dogmatic statements with no reference to their sources. This practice is bound to be a habit for which they will suffer when they speak in the big, bad real world. (To their credit, I am hearing other good and experienced evaluators catch these misstatements and challenge the speakers.) Certainly we are hearing it in the body politic, where there are more independent fact checkers reviewing public statements than ever before.

So for all of us who make our living communicating, along with other nascent communicators, we should all remember:

1. Respect Real Knowledge - look to the true experts in their given fields, who usually do not include actors, broadcasters and religious leaders (unless, of course, these people are discussing acting, broadcasting and theology, respectively)
2. Research - look for your facts; don't presume that you have them already.
3. Fact Check - challenge even your most cherished beliefs.
4. Have Others Review Your Work Beforehand - better to have your friends find your errors than your foes.