Thursday, December 24, 2009
GOVERNMENT APPOINTED EXPERTS
This is a comment I put on John Redwood's blog. He had been talking about the lack of respect for experts & I broadly agreed but made some specific points:
The problem is how expert are “experts”. As a rather silly example BBC news last night did a feature on paganism which stated with the line “experts say there are 100,000 pagans in Britain” which may be a true & conceivably even meaningful figure but how is somebody qualified to be an expert on thje figure.
The problem with MPs not being respected is the assumption that they are experts on government. The bankers appear to less deserving of the title than thought. We recently saw a drugs advisor fired, not because his advice wasn’t factual but because it disagreed with the minister’s & possibly popular opinion. This is the root of the trouble. In many disciplines government chooses “experts” & often does so for advice which reflects their wishes rather than genuine expertise.
The CRU presents a particularly concerning development where government has taken over a real science (the CRU was founded by Hubert Lamb, father of the MP Norman & a genuine climate scientist who never believed the warming scam) & perverted it by heavily funding obedient “experts”.
There are experts to whom we do give enormous trust – every time you cross a bridge you are displaying infinitely more trust in the engineer’s ability than anyone would give to any Chancellor. I suspect that proto-sciences like economics, sociology & indeed climate science could be turned into relatively rigorous disciplines if advancement in these fields was by expertise proven by accurate results rather than by government appointing “experts” for other reasons.
The problem is how expert are “experts”. As a rather silly example BBC news last night did a feature on paganism which stated with the line “experts say there are 100,000 pagans in Britain” which may be a true & conceivably even meaningful figure but how is somebody qualified to be an expert on thje figure.
The problem with MPs not being respected is the assumption that they are experts on government. The bankers appear to less deserving of the title than thought. We recently saw a drugs advisor fired, not because his advice wasn’t factual but because it disagreed with the minister’s & possibly popular opinion. This is the root of the trouble. In many disciplines government chooses “experts” & often does so for advice which reflects their wishes rather than genuine expertise.
The CRU presents a particularly concerning development where government has taken over a real science (the CRU was founded by Hubert Lamb, father of the MP Norman & a genuine climate scientist who never believed the warming scam) & perverted it by heavily funding obedient “experts”.
There are experts to whom we do give enormous trust – every time you cross a bridge you are displaying infinitely more trust in the engineer’s ability than anyone would give to any Chancellor. I suspect that proto-sciences like economics, sociology & indeed climate science could be turned into relatively rigorous disciplines if advancement in these fields was by expertise proven by accurate results rather than by government appointing “experts” for other reasons.
Labels: Government parasitism, Science/technology
