I'm working on a project about phony experts, which I loosely define as purported experts who can't do what they claim to be able to do, or whose claimed expertise is nonsensical or non-credible. I would welcome reader suggestions regarding categories of experts to look into. Here are some examples I've been toying with: (1) Homeopaths; (2) Economic forecasters; (3) Creationists; (4) Psychiatrists who claim to be able to judge "future dangerousness"; and (5) Clinical ecologists.
I'm not looking for Holocaust deniers, Flat Earthers, or any other group that's not taken seriously by the American public, but categories of experts (or even individuals--Deepak Chopra?) whose views are quoted in the media (Discovery Institute creationists), who testify as experts in court (future dangerousness prognosticators), whose services are paid for by companies (economic forecasters), or whose products and services many individuals buy (homeopathic "medicine").
Please post suggestions below, or email me at deliotb at aol dot com.
Of course, I'm separating "creationsim" from the whole "intelligent design" debate, which got into whether the two distinct epistomological bases could somehow be harmonized. (Even those who are hostile to "intelligent design" theory as naturalistic science generally do concede it's perfectly valid as religion.)
(2) Whoever that guy in Mississippi was who claimed he could tell from the bullet wound whether the trigger was pulled by one person, or by two. (He deserves his own category.)
None of this is original with me; there are some good law-review articles exposing the racket.
Wall Street Brokers -- at least one study showed they perform worse, on average, than darts thrown on a page of stocks.
Chiropractors -- a late Victorian theory of medicine that claimed that all disease is caused by "subluxations," or invisible and undetectable impingements on the spinal nerves which interfere with the flow of "Life Force." Many chiropractors still claim to be able to cure infections, like pediatric ear infections, with spinal adjustments. Although Chiropractic can temporarily relieve some back pain, chiropractic is mostly a hodgepodge of dogmatic pseudo science mixed in with some actual fact--rendering the whole completely un-reliable.
Naturopaths -- a completely pseudoscientific community with no clear consensus. Many disbelieve in the Germ Theory of disease and think germs are a symptom of disease and not the cause. Naturopaths claim to help nature and offer "holistic" treatments but Naturopathy is not based on facts or testable outcomes.
Feng Shui consultants -- while you may consider them more akin to "Flat Earthers" than respected consultants, Feng Shui consultants none the less have been called in to fix the "bad energies" in everything from a Casino near a grave yard to a zoo's animal enclosure. Complete hokum. No two "experts" can agree on the proper implementation. Not surprising since no actual facts are involved.
Anyone brought in as a consultant on "morality," especially church leaders who are presumed to be inherently "more moral" without any evidence to that effect.
I once participated in a training session in which FBI agents were being trained in testifying and how to deal with cross-examination. One agent was a "handwriting expert." A few other AUSAs and I were tasked to rattle their cages in crosses in a hypothetical case. I decided to focus on whether handwriting analysis was a real science.
At the end of it, she left the room crying and none of the FBI agents would talk to me.
And I'm not really that good.
I'm okay with definition [1] but not definition [2]. What's wrong with an expert's area of expertise being nonsensical or non-credible if he doesn't make false claims? Take an expert on Lacanian psychoanalytical theory or on Muslim theology. Their propriety as expert witnesses depends on the claims they are making (eg tenure standards in their respective fields v. predictions about the future), not whether one considers their fields coherent or credible.
Crop circle people.
Discovery Institute
Not one spy has ever been caught in the US from any polygraph exam.
The examiners, either wittingly or unwittingly, are part of this fraud that has been continuously perpetrated on the public.
How about police psychics? Departments are constantly calling them in.
1) People who do not have expertise in a certain area but pretend they do
2) People who have expertise in an are that you hold in contempt.
3) People who have expert qualifications but who whore themselves in a real scientific field and testify to things they should not testify to.
For instance, let's say that you are involved in a suit in which a renter is suing a landlord for renting her a haunted apartment. Two "experts" on ghosts and the paranormal are presented. One expert says that he or she has studied the paranormal for twenty years, has a PhD in some related field such as history or cultural anthropology with an emphasis on the paranormal, and who testifies that there is no evidence to show that ghosts exist. One expert provides the same background and qualifications and says that he or she is convinced not only that ghosts exist, but that the plaintiff has good reason to believe that one is in her apartment.
My impression is that you would consider the first a "real" expert and the second not. It's not that people can't be experts in the paranormal. It's that you don't believe that a "real" expert would come to a particular conclusion.
Do you believe in vampire experts? I do. I happen to have listened to lectures at a forensic sciences meeting by an expert on vampires and vampirism. The person is a physical anthropologist who did extensive work on relating decompositional changes under different environmental conditions and related them to cultural myths about the appearance of vampires when exhumed.
Further, in most jurisdictions, an expert is simply someone who has more knowledge about an area than the average layperson. There is no reason that someone cannot be an expert in "Creationism" or "Voodoo" or plumbing or roof repair.
Whether or not they meed Daubert or Frye criteria as "scientific" in some sense is a different question. A licensed plumber is an "expert" on doing plumbing work, but is not, in general, held to Daubert standards. What is the "error rate" or "scientific basis" on testifying about whether or not a plumbing job was done competently?
A person can, in fact, be an expert in the area of economic forcasting, just like one can be an expert in weather forecasting. Whether or not they can make accurate forecasts is a different matter. It could be that it takes an expert in economic forecasting to competently address the limitations of economic forecasting.
I understand what you are getting at, but I think you need to define it better.
I would personally love to see someone check the outcomes of court ordered DUI classes for efficacy. I have know two people who had to go through these for quite some time and they were a joke. A friend of mine had to listen to here counselor tell her all of her own problems. With a lot to lose, she was not about to repeat with or without classes. However, she was court ordered, so had no recourse but to pay through the nose and take the very unhelpful garbage they put out. I also know a young person who sat through these classes and was completely underwhelmed as were many others in the class, she reported. And, if they are not getting through to young people or to repeat offenders, then things need to change and programs that will work need to be substituted for programs that merely make certain folks a lot of money.
Now, I am all for getting drunks off the street, but most first offenders don't repeat anyway and it seems we are helpless to keep the reppeat offenders off the street and are not getting through to young people. ( I am invincible and all that stuff.) No one dares question such a noble enterprise, but it is a real moneymaker and the audience is helpless and captive and I don't think anyone is watching them. I would realkly love to know what their outcomes are, esp. with the two groups mentioned above. Again, I am all for whatever it takes for people to not drink and drive, but I have a strong suspician no one is minding the store and these various programs are not all that effective.
Al Gore and global warming, especaillay his vision of it.
Animal clairvoyents who claim to know what animals are thinking and what happened to your lost or deceased animals.
People who claim they can cure pedophile sex offenders.
Peace studies. Have they ever come up with anything that would actually work?
This is a fun and facinating topic. I wish you well with it whatever subjects you choose.
In the medical realm, 'Dr.' Mercola and the convicted conman Kevin Trudeau are on the top of my list.
It's amazing how many people equate "natural" with "good" automatically. Well, disease is natural.
2. Al Gore
Psychics
Feung Shui-types
most avant-garde nutritionists
pet therapists
Also, it sounds like you have already made a judgment on what is "phony." I'm not a believer in homeopathic medicine, but I know people who are, and swear by it. Who can say that they are entirely wrong? It could be that there's something to it. On an objective level, suppose some homeopathic cure actually works - is an expert in the subject a phony?
I'll second the whole industry of "graphology." Nothing but quackery. Ditto repressed memory experts; I think that might actually be the best example, because it is frequently admitted and it is total scientific garbage.
"It's amazing how many people equate "natural" with "good" automatically. Well, disease is natural."
Right on. Hemlock is natural, but I don't think it's very good for you. So is digitalis which is foxglove, but it wouldn't be a good idea to ingest it. At least 25% of our drugs come from herbs. They all have side effects, but the same folks who think prescription drugs are all bad. take herbs and never question safety or efficacy.
It is good to remember that the drug companies have a heck of a time beating the placebo effect when they are conducting trials of new drugs. Claritan, for instance, barely beat the placebo; just by enough to get FDA approval. The mind is a powerful thing. The companies and people who sell herbs, vitamins, homeopathic remedies, et al, know this and do they ever use it to part the folks from their money.
Organic? Besides getting lousy looking vegetables etc. and paying a fortune for them, why are we living longer and longer even though pesticides have been in use for many, many years?
Ditto electric power lines.
It seems to me that these experts are probably not better than the average person at knowing the mind of the defendent or the actual perpetrator.
I also think that whether or not you believe the global warming scientists to be doing good science, it would be interesting to compare them to the other groups using the same standards - certainly in the past there were economic (malthusians, marxists) and environmental (ice age alarmists, etc) scientists that were clearly in the pseudo-expert category.
1.) "Whores of the Court." by Margaret A. Hagen
2.) No Crueler Tyrannies." by Dorothy Rabinowitz
Some quick research finds at least one such expert practicing... I don't THINK this was the guy in the trial I watched, though.
Anyway we eliminated them and now have mental patients fending for themselves on the streets.
That's not to say that we had experts, but we did have people playing that role, and people playing the role of patients, and there was give and take and people carved out a niche for themselves in it
Homeopaths probably deserve reiteration- they delay people who need authentic medical care from getting it.
Scientologists
Spoon benders
Therapuetic Touch Healers
Those lunatics that claim they can decypher dog barks
This is a little unfair. There are thousands of years of history - if his field was American history, this would indeed by inexcusable. If his field is anything else and he was American, it would be embarassing, but no more surprising than an attorney who's been practicing real estate law for twenty years being stumped by a question relating to criminal procedure - he probably once knew the answer and has long since recycled the memory space. Much like an attorney, an historian (or other humanities PhD) is both an expert in historical METHODS and an expert in a particular substantitive area or areas, but not in all possible areas.
Maybe those "repressed memory" psychologists... though I'm not sure how seriously they're taken these days, especially those with patients that swear they've been abducted by aliens.
That you would feel impelled to call yourself an "allopathic" physician is yet another sign of the pervasive influence of pseudo science.
I'd say you are a Medical Doctor who uses evidence-based medicine. "Allopathic" is a term invented by homeopath Samuel Hahnemann as a way to describe non-homeopahic doctors of his time. It is often used as a pejorative by alternative "medicine" advocates and you shouldn't be tricked in to using their term to defend your evidence-based, scientific medicine. It's like interstellar astronomers having to call themselves by a term invented by astrologers.
Any psychologist testifying in any forensic setting who bases his opinion in some way on a Rorschach exam?
r gould-saltman
1. What is the error rate?
2. What method was used to determine the error rate?
If the error rate is 50% or greater, the field or methodology is almost certainly bunk. Likewise, if the methodology used to determine the error rate deviates in important ways from generally accepted scientific methods, the field is probably "fake."
acupuncture
palm readers
birth trauma therapists
appraisers
Granted, chemicals can and do cause illness but MCS sufferers react only to chemicals they know or think they know are present and don't react to chemicals they are un-aware are present--even if those chemicals are ones they proclaim they are sensitive to. (This is a generalization but, I think, generally true :-) )
Disqualify:
Any person whose "expertise" is derived from government regulatory service, or from administrative functions under administrative laws.
A basic problem relates to judges being "experts" in determining the qualifications vel non of "experts."
acupuncture
palm readers
birth trauma therapists
appraisers
Topics on which I know of linguists giving what I consider to be valid expert testimony include: (a) debunking opposing "voiceprint" frauds; (b) establishing the territorial boundaries of aboriginal peoples on the basis of analysis of the surviving placenames; (c) testifying in trademark cases regarding the genericity of a term; (d) determining whether a criminal defendant understood sufficient English to have understood her Miranda rights and rights to refuse a search;
(e) evaluating the adequacy of interpretation at trial; (f) determining whether an immigrant with limited English understood a criminal proposal put to him by an undercover agent and whether his behavior and spoken responses constituted agreement. (g) determining the origin of the person on a tape recording from his speech;
It is also the case that not every linguist is qualified to address every topic. For example, only the minority of linguists with expertise in acoustic phonetics (along with other people with such expertise in fields such as electrical engineering and psychology) are qualified to testify on voiceprint identification.
Doctors claiming their training makes their opinions on gun control or war somehow better informed.
Economists who believe economics explains all human behavior.
Patent Attorneys who believe they can add technical content to a patent (as opposed to improve how it is presented/claimed)
"It's amazing how many people equate "natural" with "good" automatically. Well, disease is natural.
It's amazing how many people equate "natural" with "good" automatically. scote (mail):
"Multiple Chemical Sensitivity" experts and other experts on imaginary causes of disease, like EMF."
Granted, chemicals can and do cause illness but MCS sufferers react only to chemicals they know or think they know are present and don't react to chemicals they are un-aware are present--even if those chemicals are ones they proclaim they are sensitive to. (This is a generalization but, I think, generally true :-) )
You are quite right. There are mulitple studies in which these people are put into a room and when their "offending chemicals" are introduced without their knowledge, they have no reaction.
Also, in Canada, they built an appartment complex just for the chemically sensitive and went to great lengths to eliminate all allergens. It didn't work. The people complained just as much. Which is no surprise as it is in their heads. It was a waste of money. How does this happen? See what I wrote re pacebo eeffect above.
Scote wrote,
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity" experts and other experts on imaginary causes of disease, like EMF.
Granted, chemicals can and do cause illness but MCS sufferers react only to chemicals they know or think they know are present and don't react to chemicals they are un-aware are present--even if those chemicals are ones they proclaim they are sensitive to. (This is a generalization but, I think, generally true :-)
Sorry for the confusion.
Person: "What's the weather going to be like this week?"
Meterologist: "I don't know. I'm mostly just interested in the empirical analysis of thermodynamic systems."
But alas, most weather people are in the predicting business. The predictions can be useful, but they are on the edge of the area where people can claim special expertise.
Climatologists are not quacks when they are modest and honest about being in the fledgling stages of beginning to understand some of the factors that affect climate; they are quacks when they claim to have clear crystal balls that are able to predict the future.
They pollute the public discussion and rarely face any consequences.
How about that idiot is Africa that has cured AIDS? No medical training, and the man has cured AIDS. Top notch.
Eyewitness testimony is among the least reliable types of evidence and yet it is often the most convincing.
In this light I'll toss in the ring of experts we should listen to, such as those experts on eye witness testimony who's scientific studies show the unreliability and mutability of memory and recall. To this end, the fact that we still use line ups and photo line ups and drive by IDs is unconscionable. Once a witness thinks they've identified someone they start to incorporate the image of that person, retroactively, to fill in their memory of the original event. In some cases, victims of violent crime become so convinced of the new "memory" that they can be convinced of its falsity even when faced with incontrovertible proof of actual innocence.
Bite-mark "experts."
Law enforcement "experts" who testify to various aspects of the behavior, methods and culture of criminals.
Psychiatrists and psychologists.
Though I'd definitely put quotation marks/scare quotes around "Science" and "Public Interest," probably around "Center," and possibly even around "for," "in," and "the."
Instructor: If a man in your waiting room starts having chest pains, what type of adjustment should you do?
Class *looks startled*:
Instructor: It's called the nine one one reflex, and I suggest you never wait to use it. If someone in your waiting room asks about the ambulance or looks nervous, promise them that you will call help for them if THEY have a heart attack.
2. Appraisers.
btw, Homeopathy and Naturopathy are legitimate alternatives to Allopathic Medicine. Sure, mainstream folks like AMA and BigPharma want you to think that, say, heart disease is best treated with lots of drugs and surgery, but that doesn't make it so. Sheesh. Homepathic meds have worked for me, my family and my friends. Try it yourself before including it in some list.
Animal mutilation (by aliens or satanists) experts.
Acupuncturists
Art appraisers
And here's a tough one: it appears to me that at least half the experts on autism are making it up as they go, but it's hard to tell which half. Facilitated communicators, definitely making it up.
Thanks to Sen. Dan Inouye, my taxes have paid close to $2M for 2 EPA studies of non-existent phenomena (1 algae bloom, 1 skin rash). There were a passel of Ph.D.s involved, and they were all phonies.
Child abuse "experts" who use leading questions and crackpot theories.
Translation- establish a personal level of anecdotal evidence before bowing to Big Pharma scams like the scientific method.
Ha, it seems that Bernstein may have just found one of the experts he needs to talk to.
To quote the Journal of the American Medical Association :
"There is no alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine supported by solid data or unproven medicine, for which scientific evidence is lacking."
Homeopathy and Naturopathy are the latter.
Anecdotes are not evidence. And your belief in homeopathy working doesn't mean the homeopathy had anything to do with your perception of a cure. Many illnesses are self limiting and go away on their own. A cold will go away in 7 days without treatment but it goes away in only a week with homeopathic cures.
Science is about separating what seems to be true with what is true. You've fallen in to a perceptual illusion that makes it seem like homeopathy cures disease even though it does not. It is this kind of fact resistant thinking that creates the "experts" Bernstein is looking for and you are completely oblivious to the fact. For goodness sake, homeopathy comes from 3 centuries ago and its inventor, Samuel Hahnemann, thought the "Psora" (or the "Itch") was the root 7/8 of all disease!
Homeopathy was created before the germ theory of disease and antisepsis!!! Homeopathy was known as bunk even back in 1842, when Oliver Wendell Holmes presented his lecture "Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions." Homeopathy is no more true today and we have even less excuse for believing its preposterous claims.
Homeopathy is magical thinking. It is based on the idea that you cure disease by giving someone a drug that causes the same symptoms of the disease in a healthy person. Got an itch? Well then the cure may be taking a Poison Oak Pill. Vomiting? Sirup of Ipecac. If you think that might just make things worse, then you'd be right. Samuel Hahnemann had to invent a new addition to his theory to avoid making things worse, which is that the more something is diluted the more powerful it is! Today, many homeopathic remedies are so diluted that they contain ZERO molecules of the alleged "active" ingredient--and that is by design! Hahnemann's "Theory of Infinitesimals" wold suggest that distilled water is the most potent drug on earth.
Homeopathy is taking pretend pills like the kind kids might invent while playing. Homeopathy "drugs" are supposed to be powerful, yet curiously they have no side effects--apparently having the magical property of only doing good and never harm. Homeopathy is appealing because of its simplicity but fails because it is simplistic--well, and false.
Polygraphs have been in regular use for years to try to find spies in the various security branches. I can't think of a single instance in which a polygraph by itself (ie without other independently discovered evidence which would have been sufficient in itself) has ever caught one.
The basic questions to ask when dealing with anyone claiming to be an expert are 1) what are they qualified to do; 2) what are they actually doing or claiming to do; and 3) if they are giving their opinion, what method did they use to arrive at that opinion. A licensed clinical social worker is qualified to diagnose someone with depression, based on his reported symptoms and demeanor. SHe has stepped out of the realm of her expertise if she assesses him as needing 50 mg of Effexor to treat the depression. She has stepped outside the realm of valid diagnostic methods if she goes on to opine that his depression is caused by repressed memories of abuse or (even worse) birth trauma. Do some social workers do this? Of course. Do some doctors also do this? Again, of course. But no one has said all doctors are "fake" experts or that medicine is a "fake" field.
Oh, and anecdotes are evidence. They are simply one form of evidence that is arguably less persuasive than 100,000 anecdotes statistically worked over into a conclusion that pleases the researchers.
He has those partially listed: "clinical ecologists." Like homeopaths, I think these guys have the potential to sound impressive to juries and press. They have their own journals, use statistics and jargon that looks legitimate to the uninitiated, and mainstream articles discrediting them take the form of pointed editorials or dense medical articles that soberly conclude the effects are psychological. These "experts" probably win against their critics in many forums.
I'm actually curious about the success rates of all of these groups--whether victory is defined by the overall tone of a journalistic piece or by a jury verdicts.
How about:
9-11 conspiracy theorists (some positive noise in press).
You can get an expert to tell you that there is no evidence proving or indicating that Julius Casear is actually dead if you pay him or her $400 an hour.
"In reaching this conclusion, I give no weight to the testimony and statements of [named eyewitnesses]. Witness are often incorrect as to what they witness when a traumautic accident happens, and the trauma tends to make witnesses think they saw something they did not. Instead, according to my calculations of the tire tread marks (taken about 6 months after the accident!), the trajectory of the Defendant's vehicle in relation to the Plaintiff's vehicle as diagrammed in the police report, the directional angle of the sun at that time of day, the Plaintiff's deposition, and the deposition testimony of [ambulance driver who testifed to what the Plaintiff told him], it is clear that Defendant was the sole cause of the accident."
At the settlement conference, the federal judge told Plaintiff's counsel that if we were to file a Daubert motion, all we would have to do is write that Defendant moves to exclude and attach his report and it would be granted. And, if that is all he had to show liability on behalf the Plaintiff, he'd better settle for whatever he can get that day because Plaintiff would get nothing, either on an MSJ or at trial.
Plaintiff initially demanded the policy limits of $500,000. He got $6,000, only for nuisance value. Wonder how much of that went to this "expert."
Neither. I'll go with reproduceable experiment verified by experts in the field via peer reviewed studies. If anything homeopathy has to offer can stand up to double blind experiment, awesome, its science. If it can't, its junk. Simple as that.
And btw, James Randi sponsors a 1 million dollar prize to anyone who can prove homeopathy (or any paranormal claim) under double blind controlled conditions. Seems like easy money if it can do what its supposed to, right?
Hi, I recieved a BA in journalism from a Big Ten college. Prior to this job, I covered high school girls basketball for the Chicago Sun-Times. Let me tell you why Peyton Manning isn't "clutch" and Tom Brady is a "winner".
When we're done, I'm going to explain how "playing the game the right way" and "hustling" will help you magically "develop the reflexes necessary to hit the curveball". Even though I've never met him outside of press conferences, you can take my word that I know exactly what is going through Kerry Wood's head, and whether or not he is sufficiently confident.
happylee writes:
Well, if you are the sort of person who jumps to conclusions of causality then yes, you should ignore your own experience. A more "personal" experiment is not a more valid experiment and in your case is clearly the opposite. A "personal" experiment is not a substitute for a proper controlled scientific experiment which takes into account the psychological traps of judgement and perception we can fall into.
Well, you a little right and very wrong. Anecdotes are stories. The refrain "Anecdotes are not evidence" is shorthand for "Anecdotes are not valid scientific evidence," so while you can claim they are "evidence" they are only evidence that you are telling a story which you claim to be true. They are still not valid scientifically.
As to your second point, a rigorous placebo controlled clinical study is not an anecdote x 100,000. That you don't see that explains why you so firmly believe in a Regency Era school of medicine which doesn't accept that germs cause disease! Such views were known to be hokum in the Early Victorian Era! However, your firmness of belief in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary is sound example of the kind of fact-resistant wishful thinking that leads to the phony kind of expertise that is the subject of this thread.
However, our corrupt civil courts routinely hang psychiatrists for failing to predict violence or suicide in patients. There are plenty of dubious expert witnesses paid to testify against the physicians in question. Daubert be damned.
The end result is that many psychiatists avoid really sick patients as a defensive medical practice strategy.
I have no objection to doctors who offer true expert advice--i.e., who show real science to back up their conclusions. But some trial courts appear to apply a child sexual exception to pretty much every rule, statute, and constitutional provision.
I have no objection to doctors who offer true expert advice--i.e., who show real science to back up their conclusions. But some trial courts appear to apply a child sexual exception to pretty much every rule, statute, and constitutional provision.
Cops are often treated as "experts" in things like gang activity, criminal activity, etc. Their opinions and hunches may be based on solid personal experience, but there is a big difference between personal experience and science.
I think you should spend some time asking whether "criminal profilers" are legitimate experts, based on actual cases. For example, now we know who the "Unabomber" was. It would be very interesting to look at all of the profiles made of who he was expected to be, and see how accurate they were. (I don't mean guesses by media experts, I mean actual, professional profilers who were paid by the FBI, by the police, by governmental agencies, etc., to actually come up with a profile of the Unabomber.) It could be that they were extremely accurate, or wide off the mark, or a combination of the above. But that would be a very informative study, and would be beneficial both to law enforcement, and to those involved in the criminal justice system (prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, etc.). Perhaps an objective, unbiased study has already been done, but I'm not aware of one.
I suggest the Unabomber as an example only because it's a significant and well-known case, and there were probably a lot of experts working on his profile over the years. But there are no doubt hundreds if not thousands of less well known cases that could be researched, with a retrospective look at accuracy once the real criminals were known. (This would also require certainty that the convicted criminal was actually guilty.) A study could also be made about which (if any) profiling techniques were most effective.
I would really like to see this done, if not by you, then by someone. This may be too large a topic to merely be one example of possibly "phony" experts, and I think it's possible that while some profilers could be considered "phonies," others are legitimate professionals worth listening to. I honestly don't know enough to have an informed opinion, but such a research project would have a significant impact on criminal justice matters.
The person whose dominant skills, deepest passion, and current job all line up won't be at the career counselor in the first place. The person who goes looking for advice is the one whose dominant skills are verbal, deepest passion is musical, and current job is as an accounting clerk. I have yet to meet the career counselor who knows how to advise that person.
This may be a subset of the "life coach" group that has already been mentioned, but I choose to highlight it because the name itself doesn't serve to warn people off.
Hey Frank B: actually, those you cite do not claim to be expert at what happened on 9/11. Rather, they simply point out the many, many holes in the "official" story: itself a "conspiracy theory." Since you seem to know exactly what happened, please enlighten us.
I nominate all the PNAC-like "think tanks" who predict, for example, that the Iraqis would greet us with flowers and candy. They're apparently considered expert enough to have the ears of some of the most powerful people on earth.
What the fuck? I continue to be completely baffled by people's resistance to science endorsed by every major relevant scientific organization around the world.
Cut the
I suppose some "true" experts can pass a blind taste test, but not many.
IP infringement "experts" who don't know the case law reagrding similarity tests?(See SCO vs IBM)
I'd like to add a vote for polygraph tests, and voice stress analysis. Neither of them works.
And see Jerry Pournelle's The Voodoo Sciences, [1988] for a discussion of whether economics is a science or not.
2) Financial analysts who do technical analysis. They have a language all of their own that sounds impressive to the layman but their results are extremely weak, at best. Through outlets like CNBC and the WSJ they are able to deliver their bunk on a daily basis.
3) Mutual fund advisers. Raking in huge commissions from the oblivious public who are completely unaware that low commission index funds will outperform any actively managed fund their adviser will recommended at least 80% of the time.
Thanks for the link to the article by Pournelle. I've now been reading his other articles and posts for a half-hour, and I'll probably spend the rest of my "down time" during the day reading more. It's a gold mine there.
(some day I'll tell you about my run in with a chiropractor and the resultant 3 vertebra cervical fusion...)
And I'd say that priests/rabbis/inmans are well qualified to talk about ethics, being that religion deals heavily with morals and ethics (and yes, I'm aware of the difference between the two).
link
Well, in defense of guidence counslers (my grandmother was one later in life), teenagers need all the help they can get.
And to join the fun, I say Dr. Bernstein should add to his list Manmade Global Warming "experts" who claim that evil mankind is locked in a war with the environment, bla bla. (Reminiscent of evil capitalists at war with virtuous proles, bla bla -- hey, maybe that's why the modern manmade hotglobo movement is run by a bunch of marxoid rejects...hmmm.)
This reminds me of a conversation I once had with a patient about cigarette smoking and lung cancer. I told him that he should stop smoking because it was damaging his lungs (he already had moderate lung disease) and his risk factors (family, smoking level, etc) suggested that he was a prime candidate for smoking related lung cancer or heart attack. His response was to ask me if I could tell him with certainty that he was going to get lung cancer. I told him no. He said "See, you don't know nothing." And, in fact, he didn't die of lung cancer or heart attack. He died of pneumonia secondary to his COPD.
There are still folk out there who claim that nobody can "prove" that smoking causes lung cancer, and that all of medicine is pseudoscience in this area.
Well, in fact I do know something. And the fact that my prediction was inaccurate doesn't mean that I can't accurately state the increased odds of something happening or make statements about causation.
If a good meterologist tells me it's going to rain tomorrow, I'll carry an umbrella. I'm not going to claim that it's just pseudoscience and be surprised when I get wet. If a cop friend of mine comes to me and says "Don't trust that guy. He's ringing all my bells as a con artist," I'm going to be very careful in my dealings with the man. I'm not going to say that the cop's 25 years of street experience is meaningless and then be surprised when my bank account gets cleaned out.
The problem is that expectations for a lot of these things -- forensic psychiatry, profiling, etc. -- are simply too high. It's not a matter of being 100% right versus being fake. The problem is often not with the discipline, it seems to me. The problem is with what people demand from it and how it is represented.
HIV-denialists.
What category for expertise doesn't have its charlatans? And it doesn't require being an attorney to know that every case that relies on any expertise is heavily based on "Our scientists are better than your scientists." Even the case development itself is based on an expertise (one hopes they find the expert case builder) that includes an expertise in the incompetence of experts, judges, opposing attorneys, juries and legislation.
But if you're looking for categories in which charlatans seem to prevail, or in which the entire category seems either built on a foundation of nonsense or polluted by corruption or folly, well...
Again I say, name a category!
My personal "love to hate them" categories are:
Anyone at Violence Policy Center, Brady Campaign, (Whoever) Against Gun Violence, and all of that ilk. They don't mind lying or spreading the most ridiculous of claims in support of their cause. Associated with that is any expert who believes in compromise as a noble solution.
A certain class of justices, judges and commissioners (oh, let's throw in politicians and activists) who think we need to be "in step" with the world. The U.S. was built on certain principles that were "out of step" with the rest of the world. We don't need to be out of step for its own sake, but we should never be afraid of it, either.
Scientists who claim to understand global warming and claim "it's the humans, dammit!" I think the theory related to solar activity, recently released on BBC, is sensible. But of course the U.N. has its cabal of experts (haha) that "know" better.
And while we're at it, the U.N.
As I said, though, I've had fun looking at the mischigas of every group from teachers to architects, to attorneys, psychologists, psychiatrists and other "social" and behavioral scientists (economists and criminologists among them), historians (can you say, Bellesiles, Neighbor?), business and management consultants...
Sigh. It's a sick world, folks. Schmexperts abound.
All DEA field agents who testify in court regarding suspicious activity of drug defendants - "talking on cell phone", "meeting unknown hispanic male at restaurant for lunch" "looked both ways on street when entering vehicle, possible counter-surveillance" bla bla bla
WHile were at it, K-9 drug cops, who claim that the dog alerted to some area or another on the car after encouragement from the handler and who never seem to have data on the number of false positives or mistakes made by the dog, which are considered to be infallable.
Anybody conducting research on the dangers of marijuana on behalf of the federal government.
You might look at the Innocence Project's account of exonerations of those wrongly found guilty and often sentenced to death. As I recall, many convictions were based on fake expertise. Of course, there's the Dr. Death types, experts on "future dangerousness," who have infested the system in Texas.
But they are de rigeur, and locked in. No HR profession dares do without them. Just thinking about it, they feel a cool breeze in their hind quarters.
Remember the profile of the Beltway Sniper?
"Looking at the Republican side of the aisle, Jonathan Chait points out (via Matthew Yglesias), that even as scientific evidence on global warming has become overwhelming and most of the oil industry has ceased to promote delusional thinking on this issue, the same thinking has hardened within the Congressional Republican party, to the point where Republican members of Congress who are qualified scientists (amazingly, there are some) are barred from sitting on committees where they might disrupt the anti-science orthodoxy. The position of rightwing blogs is even worse, with a recent survey 59-0 score in favour of the delusional position."
From John Quiqqin's analysis at crookedtimber.com of the "alternative reality" created by the 25-30% minority of the country cloistered in the diminishing right wing.
Nonsense. If these people didn't have definite theories about what happened, they wouldn't idly tell the press that it was, say, a termite demolition like ex-BYU professor Jones does.
I'll tell you what happened on 9-11: several planes collided with several buildings, two of which were subsequently destroyed by the damage of these collisions. It might be that there was some grander conniving government conspiracy, but any theory that starts out by denying these simple events (like almost the whole "truth" movement does) is on scientifically unsupportable ground. 9-11 conspiracy theory experts thrive because the average person does not know what engineers have known for a hundred years--that fire alone can destroy a steel-frames skyscraper. That's why the beams are insulated in the first place. When good evidence shows that the insulation didn't cling during the collision, and when even better evidence shows God damned planes colliding with them and instantaneously spreading a fire across several stories, only a phony expert would insist that the government must have blown them up.
Like the homeopathic medicine believer, your post just illustrates how these experts have the command of popular attention. I don't blame you though; the Bush years have been wretched.
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Mike Walker has a really good one with anti-vaccine "experts." Like environmental ecologists, they're driving litigation and leading people into questionable behavior. Probably an even more timely example: the anti-vaccine movement has yet to peak, I think.
I very sincerely hope that you're wrong on this. In all other respects, that was quite a nice comment.
And, in fact, he didn't die of lung cancer or heart attack. He died of pneumonia secondary to his COPD.
Just curious, but how old was he when he died?
I believe the profile of the Atlanta boy killer was wrong as well.
In fact, profilers always conclude that the offender must be a white man in his 30s with low social skills and few friends.
As for lie detectors, a new book about the unmasking of Ana Montes, the Cuban spy, not that she passed 2 polygraphs.
We warming skeptics do have one point in our favor: nobody has any idea what the globe's temperature was a century ago, so nobody knows whether it's warmer now or not.
They think they they're the first ones to have thought of skepticism, in much the same way that thirteen-year-old boys think they're the first ones to have thought of sex.
One of mine assigned a comic-book primer (literally, it was a comic book about feminist theory and Foucault and such) as required reading. (He also thought the Russians had gone to the moon, yet was in charge of teaching a class in which foreign films were to be placed in historical perspective.) The other believes in chi, yet lectures me about the nature of objective scientific knowledge.
Read Gross and Levitt's Higher Superstition for a good overview.
And chiropractors.
Trust me on this. You will not be disappointed in your search. At least I haven't been, so far.
So pretty much anyone who makes social predictions for public consumption is a good start - especially TV talking heads and column/opinion writers. This should include political analysts, economic analysts, social trend analysts, etc. I doubt many of them have a success rate distinguishable from that achievable by the combination of basic knowledge of the subject and guessing.
The opinions of these people are widely cited and often trated as serious analysis, generally without any accompanying context of how good the analyst actually is. The only context ever provided is "this analyst got X right," which really tells us nothing but is meant to boost the analyst. What would really be informative is something like "We looked at the sample ofpredictions made by this analyst from 2000-2005, and x% were correct, y% were incorrect, and z% are still inconclusive." But of course, nobody ever does that.
I don't remember exactly -- it was in his late 60s/early70s.
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I very sincerely hope that you're wrong on this. In all other respects, that was quite a nice comment.
I hope I'm wrong too, it's just my own impression. I wanted to check my gut instincts, so I ran some lexis-nexis news searches. This is imperfect because the database has picked up more feeds in the last few years, biasing it forward, but I thought a comparison to "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity" would be fruitful. It seems to confirm my impression that MCS coverage has stabilized or declined while the vaccination scares are still relatively potent (at least in the US).
Grr. Doesn't allow "code" tag.
The figures represent article results for "multiple chemical sensitivity" (a search which picks up several variants). The vaccination scare is harder to search, so I just used "vaccine /s autism" which is the most prominent alleged link. It seems that this was a big story in the Commonwealth countries before it was in the US. There's obviously no significance to numerical difference between columns, just the trends each shows. Databases All News, US Newspapers and Wires, and UK Publications.
In Britain at least, the alleged vaccine-autism link has long-since peaked, and the worst may behind us here too.
And he keeps getting called a statistician, which he is not. He is a social scientist, who have taught social science students statistics at the University of Århus. There is quite a difference in the educations to become statisticians and social scientists in Denmark (for example, the first have a heavy emphasis on math).
Another group, which might not be taken too seriously in the US, but which have had quite a big influence, is AIDS deniers like Peter Duesberg.
There was a documentary made about the Judas Priest trial called Dream Deceivers in case anybody is interested.
I'm amazed that people with a junior college education and a few weeks of police academy training can acquire such vast and deep knowledge of medical and behavioral science in such a short time. I'm even more amazed that people with at least a JD degree can become so gullible just by donning a black robe.
Summed, it was, hire a local expert; don't give the jury the impression that you had to go all the way across the country to find somebody to lie for you.