Expert FAIL

Interesting article in the NY Times last week which accurately diagnosed the problem of the chattering classes: the experts are rarely right. People are very often chosen simply because they make for good tv, or know how to write a good sentence. They're not necessarily chosen for their analytic skill.

The other part of the article goes a bit further, questioning the existence of analytic skills, and saying it's just guessing. Stating that experts aren't right that much more often than ordinary people, is, in my expert opinion, at least to a certain extent bullshit. Take doctors as an obvious example. They're clearly more right about sick people than non-doctors are...

I'm going to stop this blog post before I have to start questioning the nature of the sciences vs. the humanities and just close by saying I wonder if this is what the Norwegian public sphere is like, or if this is an American phenomenon.