“The greatest folly is to accept expert statements
uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion. Moreover,
to the extent that time allows, we may become a little bit expert ourselves;
but we don't have time enough to go far in this direction. (if we went all the
way we would become just one more expert, thus moving ourselves to the other
side of the debate and leaving the rest of the lay public with the same old
problem.)
We need lay defenses against expertise. Fortunately there are
such. The most important defense measure is to make oneself sensitive to the
biases introduced by the assumptions and methods of experts.”