An Expert usually makes a few Observations and arrives at an Inference. To look at the various reasons why an expert is ignored, we have to consider possible issues with the Observation(s), the Inference and finally the Expert himself.
Unverifiable Occurrences: The scientific method demands that all experiments must be repeated and verified by an independent tester. So, if an expert claimed to have observed an event that is a warning sign of future doom, at the very minimum, people will want either irrefutable evidence of the occurrence of this event - or they will want to independently observe an occurrence of this event themselves. When this isn’t possible, the expert will most likely be dismissed as a crank or The Gadfly.
But what happens if a strange phenomenon occurs that only you could observe, but you had no way to take any readings and no one else claimed to have observed it. Say you are a nineteenth century astronomer and you noticed a bright flash that lit up the entire night sky, but it lasted only a split second and no one else in your town saw it because they were all asleep! What you witnessed was a Short Duration Gamma Ray Burst. Unlike a Supernova which this event somewhat resembles, a GRB doesn’t leave a well lit nebula cloud visible for days after, and thereby noticeable and verifiable after the fact. It just occurs and leaves no trace. So, until magnetic media and high power radio telescopes were developed during the mid to late twentieth century, that were capable of observing and recording more GRBs, anyone claiming to have seen one would have been dismissed. But this means that the only warning we may have ever received of an incoming black hole was ignored. And then it may be too late.
The only recourse if you are an expert who finds themselves in such a situation is to hope that Technology Marches On and delivers better sensing and recording equipment, and also that Science Marches On and a viable explanation of this phenomenon is eventually derived.
Infrequent Occurrences: There is a saying in Military Intelligence - once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, but three times is enemy action. This is because better inferences are formed from patterns of behavior rather than just single rare occurrences of strange events. And you need at least three occurrences of an event to discern the frequency of occurrence. So, if an expert happened to observe just one occurrence of a problematic event and tried to raise an alarm, people will first be on the lookout for the next occurrence of that event. And when they wait and wait and wait and the event never recurs, they dismiss the expert as a crank and move on. But if he had remained patient and come to them with a record of events occurring at a particular frequency, they will wait till the next predicted occurrence of that event, notice it, verify the observation, believe the expert and take steps to counter whatever is the cause.
But not everything can generate warning signs that occur at a regular frequency. Taking the example of the Short Duration Gamma Ray Burst mentioned above, that one bright flash lasting 0.5 to 1 seconds may be the only warning we might get that a black hole has formed in our vicinity. And by the time it approached just close enough, it is too late. So, if someone had noticed this strange burst in the late nineteenth century and tried to warn people, no one would have believed him because there are no similar bursts they could look at. But had he captured evidence of the burst using turn of the millennium technology, people would have taken him seriously because science and technology caught up. So, in such a situation being Vindicated by History due to advances in science and technology is once again, the only recourse.
“Anomalies” that aren’t Anomalous: what is normality and what is an anomaly? The answer, unfortunately, is decided entirely by statistics. So, if an event falls within an accepted standard deviation from an accepted mean, it is considered a normal event and only something that deviates a lot is considered an anomaly. But what if some event falls say just outside the bounds of normality? Is this something to get worried about? Or can it be dismissed as harmless?
An expert who raises a stink about a barely anomalous event is more than likely to be ignored and dismissed rather than be taken seriously. He will be accused of making a mountain out of a molehill so to speak. But what if this “molehill” really is on the way to growing into a mountain? Say for example, a meteorologist noticed a 1 cm increase in rainfall levels so far this year. But since it is so small a delta, his concerns were ignored - right up until the day a “hundred year flood” hit after a ginormous downpour.
This is another situation where the expert can only be Vindicated by History, since what are acceptable and anomalous deviations from the mean, change over time. The number of data points collected could have increased, causing the mean to shift, or certain occurrences such as natural disasters etc may have forced a reinterpretation of data previously considered noise.
The Sensor that Detected a Wolf: Say you’re a well known solar astronomer, whose particular expertise is sunspot activity. And one sunny day, you notice a rather big blotch on the sun. Alarmed, you capture images throughout this day, then the next and head to the local Astronomical Society, to warn them of possibly unstable sunspot activity. But a day later, they scold you because they can’t seem to verify your observations. You plead with them to perhaps observe the sun from the same location you did. They bring a telescope more sophisticated than yours - and still can’t find what you claim to have seen.
You walk over to your telescope - and then notice the smudge of bird droppings on your outer lens.
You clean it up. You look through your eyepiece and notice only a small smudge. But now, you can’t trust this telescope anymore. Is what you are seeing an actual sunspot? Or is it a leftover smudge from cleaning the lens? Perhaps your cleaner was too harsh and corroded part of the lens. Or perhaps it didn’t get all of the droppings. In your anxiety, you decommission this telescope and order a new one. But it takes time to be manufactured, delivered and assembled. And once you have it, you take a look.
To your horror, there is a big blotch on the solar “disc”. You check for dirt, bird droppings, lens damage etc. You are satisfied that your telescope is clean. And this means that a sunspot grew a lot while you were getting your telescope fixed. You now go to the Society with more documentation about how clean your telescope’s lenses are, along with your sunspot readings. And while they are pouring over all your data, a major solar flare hits.
This is the danger posed by malfunctioning equipment. You will have to waste a lot of time convincing yourself and other people that what you observed wasn’t sensor noise or a glitch. So, actual correct readings from that sensor will be ignored when they shouldn’t have. That said, the difference between a bad sensor and a wolf crier is that the sensor can be fixed. Or replaced. Or improved.
Too Many Leaps of Logic: Event “A” occurs, making it a near certainty that Event “B” will occur. Which implies that Event “C” will most likely occur. And then Event “D” May occur too. So, should an expert observe the occurrence of “A” and predicts the occurrence of “D”, most people will be able to follow along when she explains how A causes B, which causes C, which in turn causes D. But what if the expert didn’t stop with “D”, continued along the chain of logic, extrapolated as far as she could go, and predicted that Event “Q” will occur? How likely is she to be believed?
Unfortunately, not too likely, because this expert is expecting too many other independent factors to just fall into place at just the wrong time. Take the classic story of the lack of a nail for a horseshoe resulting in an entire kingdom to be annexed. Was the cavalry section and troupe commander so incompetent that being short one horse and horseman cause them to lose a battle? Was the squadron commander so inept that one under strength troupe threw his entire battle plan into whack? And was the division commander’s strategic plan so flimsy that one squadron down one horse caused the strategy to fail? Was the general of all armies so dense that he could not adapt to his cavalry division’s underperformance? So, if an expert in battle strategy had predicted that the lack of a single nail can mean ruination for the entire kingdom, he’d be laughed out - because for his prediction to come true, several other things had to simultaneously go wrong too.
The only recourse for the expert in this situation is to back up each step of the prediction with data. Lots and lots of data showing that all those other factors have been accounted for, and that these Disaster Dominoes are indeed about to fall. And in the process, uncovering several more serious problems than just the “lack of a nail”.
Explanation is Too Complex to Understand: We all know of Occam's Razor and Hanlon's Razor. So why is it that sometimes an expert ignores those rules and comes up with an inference that is a convoluted, twisted Kudzu?
Because sometimes, that is just how the science worked out. Or the dynamics of a complex system came into play. And only this expert was smart or experienced or knowledgeable enough to unravel it. And now, he’s going to have a devil of a time convincing others of this explanation. Because the average person won’t be able to keep track of all the threads and knots.
Take the example of the Short GRB mentioned above. Would a lay person understand and believe an expert who stated that the bright one second flash was the result of neutron star remnants from two different supernovae colliding, one neutron star shattering into neutrons, which fall onto the other star, increasing its mass beyond a maximum allowable limit, thereby causing it to collapse into a black hole, with the burst occurring the moment the singularity formed? Many would lose track at “two neutron stars collided” because the mechanisms that explain everything beyond that, rely on complicated interactions at a quantum level and at an astronomical level. A lay person will need to have the astronomical concepts of spaghettification under extremely high gravity, the formation of accretion disks and relativistic jets, as well as the quantum concepts of degeneracy, conversion of matter to energy and the emission of radiation by matter falling into a singularity, explained in detail to them.
The only recourse for an expert is to therefore, “dumb down” the explanation of the complex phenomenon. Or, if the explanation seems to be getting too complex and contrived, reassess whether it is actually the correct one.
This aversion to complexity is also why most conspiracy theories are not taken seriously. For the average conspiracy to be true, way too many “conspirators” would have had to pull off complex interactions with each other, while seemingly leaving no traces whatsoever. Therefore, there would have been more than enough evidence with which to blow the conspiracy wide open already.
The Correlation Causation Fallacy: Say you are a traffic engineer for a small planned community. You notice that there is an uptick in car crashes during months of high rainfall. You conduct a simulation with the design of the neighborhood’s roads, and notice that they are insufficiently sloped to allow all that extra rainfall to drain into the storm drains. Water stands, tires can hydroplane, wheels lose traction and cars crash. You bring your findings to the township council, they believe you and allot funds to rebuild the roads to drain rainfall better.
The next year you notice a spate of car crashes in a different month. You are initially flummoxed. Roads are new, the water runoff problem was fixed, there don’t seem to be any adverse weather conditions, nor did any traffic signal lights fail. But you remember reading that the community has been affected by layoffs. You have an epiphany! During the next council meeting, you put forward a theory that the crashes may have been layoff victims perpetrating insurance scams to get themselves new vehicles for free. You recommend sending out a blanket warning to the town’s biggest insurers of vehicles. And your recommendation is rejected outright.
Why? Because you couldn’t show an actual causal relationship between people losing their jobs to people crashing their cars. Although your gut feelings scream at you that the two are connected, you can’t find any proof.
Sometimes, this problem too resolves itself retroactively when Science Marches On and actually establishes that causal relationship. Such as equating cloud rotations to tornado formation. But at other times, this happens because the expert starts poking his nose into matters he has no expertise in. See below for that.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: You’ve noticed something odd, you’ve collected data from multiple observations, you’ve checked and double checked your equipment, you’ve come up with what appears to be an airtight explanation of those strange events. You use all your political capital to request a meeting. You present your findings and then start explaining your inference.
Then someone stands up and points out a major error you’ve made in your calculations.
Oopsies!!
You go home, embarrassed. You check your work. There it was, plain as day! You kick yourself for not catching the mistake, then proceed to fix the error and rerun all your computations.
And you arrive at the exact same inference.
Turns out the dynamics of the phenomenon you’ve observed, either compensated for your mistake or ignored it entirely. Or you got there because you encountered an as yet unknown process whose inner workings are not well understood, but it will reliably give you certain results given certain inputs. This is known as a “black box” and many biological systems are currently only understood this way. So, you make another presentation and call another meeting.
Only to get laughed out of the room, when you tell them that despite fixing your mistake, you’ve still obtained the same result. They complain about you not being able to admit defeat. They’ll accuse you of doctoring your experiment. All your pleas for them to just check your work, fall on deaf ears. Your credibility has taken a fatal blow, from which it may never recover. Because most people would expect that fixing a mistake in a calculation will produce a different result.
You have no other option at this point, but wallow in disgrace and self-pity, then seethe in rage as a different expert presents the same corrected computation that you did, arrives at the same result you did, and basks in all the adulation.
This is why it is so important, even for experts to have someone independently verify their work before they officially present it. And it is important for that verifier or fact checker to be truly independent and detail oriented; not a Yes-Man. This way, any mistake you make can be caught before you ruin your reputation forever.
Inference Contradicts Accepted Dogma: Your readings were correct, your observations stuck to an observed pattern of frequency, your inference was well deduced, well supported by data and it stands up to Occam, Hanlon and all other “razors”. Should be a shoo-in for acceptance, right? So, why is there so much of skepticism? What could possibly go wrong?
The inference you put forward either deviates a lot, or outright contradicts long held consensus on the matter. It flies in the face of what other experts have long seen as “settled science”. Note that this requires universal disapproval from other experts, not laypersons.
For example, during a bubonic plague outburst, instructions to bathe every day and keep your room ventilated and well lit by the sun, were excellent advice! Except that it completely flew in the face of miasma theory that was “settled medical science” during that time. Most healers at the time believed that ventilating a sufferer’s room only spread the miasma. It took until the invention of the microscope and the postulation of germ theory to prove this advice right! But even germ theory had to fight an uphill battle to displace miasma theory as “settled science”.
If you find yourself in this situation, being a Determinator is your only recourse. Present your findings to anyone who’ll listen, gain one supporter, then another, build a base of support, grow it further and eventually you’ll have the consensus to declare your theory to be “settled”.
And don’t be so quick to dismiss someone else who seems to have a well researched, well thought of theory to contradict yours.
Inference Contradicts Political Opinion: Unlike the above example where it is other experts that dismiss your inference, this time it is the politicians and laypeople who are rubbishing your claims. Because, no matter how scientifically or mathematically or logically sound your theory is, it violates a fundamental tenet of their political beliefs or their religion.
The obvious example one can think of, is Climate Change being dismissed by politicians on the right. But be careful in assuming that only right wing or conservative politicians are guilty of this - politicians of all leanings are equally resistant to being told that they’re wrong. For a left wing example, one only need look at Sri Lanka. The country’s president ignored agricultural experts who warned him against going fully natural and organic; eliminating all fertilizers and pesticides. He was for a while, the darling of everyone in the EU for his all organic farm policy. After which major crop failures occurred, pushing the country to a total economic collapse.
Inference is Too Alarmist:
You’re a well respected trusted astrophysicist. You make a frightening discovery - that a planet killer sized comet is headed straight at us. You immediately issue a warning. The lead researcher at your lab backs you. He informs you that the National Security Council has been advised. With baited breath you wait to see what the various governments of the world do? Will they shelter the best and brightest in underground shelters? Will they construct an ark ship that will temporarily house a large enough population that will return and repopulate Earth once the environment has become safe again? Will they try to tow the comet away, using the gravitational pull of another asteroid? Is there any way you could help out with any of these measures?
But … nothing happens! No announcement is made, no rumors circulate about any secret project, not even a preliminary meeting. You pull all favors you can, to get an audience with someone in the White House. You put on your best suit, you shave your scraggy beard off, you bring lots of PowerPoint slides. And then a minor functionary sits down with you and sternly informs you that your comet warning is being deliberately suppressed.
Incensed, you storm out. You go to the nearest newspaper office, meet with their editor in chief and tell her all about your findings. Hopefully a warning blared across every newspaper will galvanize the government into action, right? Except, the editor in chief tells you that she’s decided not to run your warning. “For the greater good” she says, “To avoid causing a worldwide panic.”
This is what happens normally, if you try to warn people of an impending threat that they are utterly incapable of dealing with. In the above example, the asteroid tow would be a long shot, preferably executed way in advance, while all other options save only a few thousands while billions are left to die. Or if the astrophysicist is warning everyone of a supernova, magnetar flare or GRB, there is absolutely nothing that can be done at all.
Ultimately, governments are supposed to represent all people in their polity, so unless your warning comes early enough for measures to be taken to save almost everyone, no government will listen to you. Because if they do, there would be panic, pandemonium, a complete breakdown in law and order, rioting, looting, doomsday cults etc. Which would be yet another unmanageable scenario for the government.
All you can do, is reassure yourself that you did everything you could, and then start prepping.
The Expert Who Cried Wolf:
It isn’t always a gadfly boy or the Attention Whore who cries “Wolf!” Sometimes, the crier could actually be an expert in the field. Someone who normally has the credentials and achievements to be taken seriously. Yet even they do get proven wrong now and then.
But instead of graciously accepting their mistake, they become a Windmill Crusader, setting out to prove that they were right after all. They turn into a Single-Issue Wonk, bringing up their discredited theory whenever and wherever they are afforded an opportunity to speak. But in time, people will tire of their incessant prattling and will refuse to entertain them. The expert slowly gets relegated to Conspiracy Theorist with only kooks willing to listen to him.
But, what if, in the middle of his ramblings, he does say one thing that is prescient? What if statements A, B and C were lunatic ramblings, but fact D is absolutely correct?
Unfortunately, it means that people will dismiss his findings, correct they may be, because of his previous reputation for pushing nonsense. It means that he’ll suffer the same fate as the Expert who was Right for the Wrong Reasons. He’ll have to gnash his teeth and bay at the moon when someone else independently arrives at the same conclusion he did, and got the recognition.
This is why, particularly as an expert, you have to have the maturity to accept your mistake and move on, so you still retain people’s trust. So that when you do state something true and prescient, you won’t be dismissed as a has-been crank.
Expert Overreach:
You go to your dentist for a routine teeth cleaning. He notices that your hand seems to be twitching a lot and prescribes you a muscle relaxant. Do you take his advice? Or would you take that very same muscle relaxant only if prescribed by a neurologist specializing in neuromuscular diseases?
A certain amateur astronomer gazes at the sky and notices that the stars, rather than remaining in a fixed position, are receding away from us. He posits a theory that the Universe was formed by a large explosion that sent all matter flying away from each other. Problem is, he is a Catholic Priest, not an astrophysicist. Do you believe him?
Turns out, in the second case outlined, the priest Georges Lemaitre (who, for the record, was a real astrophysicist with two doctorates, with his physics Ph D from MIT no less. But him being a priest overshadowed his scientific credentials for many.) is ultimately credited with having postulated the Big Bang Theory, but it was a long uphill struggle against the astrophysics community to get the recognition he deserved. Among his detractors was the great Einstein himself, who stated that “his math is correct, but his physics is atrocious”. The problem is that his proposal, now known as the Big Bang Theory, looked too much like the creation story, in which God created the universe ex nihilio, from nothing, to too many people who had trouble accepting the idea. (To be fair, Lemaitre himself was too much of a scientist to mix religion with science: he consistently qualified his explanation by arguing that he does not have an argument as to how Big Bang came about and that perfectly "mundane" origins are perfectly plausible.)
Both cases though, are examples of an expert in their field opining about matters technically outside their area of expertise. This is because attaining expertise in any field requires a high level of intelligence, a high amount of dedication as well as a scrupulous discipline to ensure that their opinions are sound. This intelligence, dedication and discipline translate well to most fields, particularly the hard sciences, which share principles of observation, deduction, experimentation and inference. So, does this mean that we must believe all opinions of an expert?
No!! Because the intelligence, dedication and discipline that are necessary to attaining expertise are not sufficient to obtain that expertise. An expert also has detailed domain knowledge obtained by exhaustive study and at least a decade of experience. Therefore, when the expert dabbles in fields outside of his expertise, he will lack that domain knowledge. He may have only a superficial knowledge, or at worst, enough knowledge to give dangerously wrong advice that may seem correct.
If you are an expert and you find yourself compelled to state an opinion or postulate on something outside your field of experience, give yourself a moment to pause and think about the longer term consequences of your advice. Then find an actual expert in that field and get their opinion. And be prepared to hand over the entire endeavor (and the credit) to them, keeping your own ego in check.
Expert Has Other Serious Flaws:
You have an expert with extensive knowledge in the field, a proven track record of success in the field and is willing and able to help you. Except, this expert has certain attributes about him that make him odious - perhaps he held (and probably still holds) unacceptable political or social or religious views. Or he was once associated with a controversial, even hated organization. So, working with him may even be construed as endorsing his controversial views or associations.
This was the problem faced by the Eisenhower administration when the USSR launched Sputnik and the American public panicked and clamored for a US response. The US Army had one Dr. Werner von Braun available and willing to design space rockets for the US government. Only problem was that Dr. von Braun was an ex-Nazi that the US Army had secretly spirited away - to pick his brain about rocket science, given he was the designer of both the V-1 flying bomb and the V-2 missile. And Ike didn’t want to publicly work with a Nazi. He therefore ignored the Army’s ideas and supported the Navy’s Vanguard rocket program.
But after the Vanguard rocket spectacularly failed, blowing up during launch and causing the Soviets to deride it as “kaput-nik” and “flop-nik”, Ike was forced to bite his tongue and work with von Braun. His input directly lead to the successes of the US space program, including the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo programs.
But people are not always willing to look the other way. At the same time that von Braun’s reputation was being rehabilitated, another famous inventor’s reputation slid into the sewer and has never recovered. This inventor was famed Bell labs physicist Dr. William Shockley, one of the co-inventor of the transistor. When he started espousing eugenics as well as “race-intelligence correlation” theories, he was ostracized. His startup company crumbled because no one wanted to invest in him or work with him.
