How Expert Are the Experts?

By Alan Caruba

We live in a society that apparently has experts on everything stacked ten deep. You cannot turn on the television without being introduced to experts of every description about everything.

That being the case, why is the nation on the brink of insolvency despite the fact that I can order a product, receive email confirmation, and a tracking notice of its shipment without once having to talk to a living person?

That, I submit, is pure genius, whereas creating programs for the wasteful redistribution of wealth, mine and yours, is my definition of really, really stupid.

Why stupid? Because communism and/or socialism, sooner or later always fails. Why? Because banishing the ownership of private property—this is MY stuff, not yours—runs counter to everything we humans strive to achieve and because people don’t want to interact with the government in some fashion every damned day, unless it’s the postman.

As Thomas Paine put it, “that government is best which governs least”, calling it a necessary evil.

I go to wondering how many PhDs there are in the United States and, it only took a bit of Googling to conclude there is a huge glut of PhDs, not just here, but worldwide. Considering that it takes from 7.5 to 10 years to nail the diploma to the wall that is a lot of time acquiring something that often does not kick open the door to prosperity, although it does look good on your resume.

Let us grant that we want our physicians, Doctors of Medicine, to have spent a good stretch of time learning how not to to kill us in the process of curing us. Other fields critical to our well being include engineers who build bridges and such. We want smart people to ensure that the vast preponderance of dumb people don’t kill us prematurely.

Anyone who has spent any time around PhDs or, in my case, answering their emails, soon concludes that many of them are just nitwits. The greatest drawback of being a PhD is, apparently, concluding that you are smarter than everyone else and then wanting to make that point on an hourly basis, particularly with strangers.

So, forgive me if I have grown old and skeptical listening to or reading PhDs and the views of experts, people who are supposed to know what they are talking about.

Permit me to cite just a few examples.

“So here is the Great Society. It’s the time—and it’s going to be soon—when nobody in this country is poor.” – Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965.

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.” Jim Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, firing Elvis Presley after one performance on September 25, 1954.

“Get your feet off my desk, get out of here, you stink, and we’re not going to buy your product.” – Joe Keenan, president of Atari, responding to Steve Job’s offer to sell him rights to the new personal computer he and Steve Wozniak had developed, 1976.

“There is not the slightest indication that (nuclear) energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” – Dr. Albert Einstein, 1932. (PS. He changed his mind).

In 1984, Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, had their book, “The Experts Speak” published by Random House. Minus source notes and an index, it ran 345 pages of quotes on the wide range of human experience, all by experts, all of whom were wrong.

Let me close this observation on expertise or the lack of it, by noting that all politicians lie. The best and most noble of them lie on occasion and the rest of them lie all the time. Our current President has managed to lie ceaselessly, with or without the aid of a TelePrompter. He is not to be trusted.

Likewise, far too many scientists have taken to lying a great deal as well and this has been particularly obvious as regards all those telling us that global warming is real, carbon dioxide is a lethal pollutant, and just about anything involving the use of a chemical is suicide.

In Proverbs 9:10 it says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Let me amend that by suggesting that wisdom includes regarding all those experts on the television, radio and print media with great skepticism. This is another way of saying take the time to do your own research. If your findings defy history and logic, you’re wrong.

© Alan Caruba, 2011