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0 pointsarp2423y ago0 comments

Should we have trusted the experts on satanic ritual abuse in the 80s and 90s?

I have many gripes with this attitude; experts can be wrong and even entire fields can be wrong. The satanic ritual abuse is a particularly egregious example with many "experts" mouthing off complete nonsense, but also see e.g. the replication crisis.

And which expert do you believe? There are many expert. "You've got to ask the right expert" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lADB9Qu53CY

Remember all the "experts" that told us that asbestos and smoking was harmless? Or the "experts" that told us climate change wasn't real? Later turned out that this was just industry FUD/lies.

Experts view things from their expertise. That's great, but many scenarios extend beyond one expertise and involve trade-offs, and can't be viewed purely through one lens.

Now, I'm not so arrogant to think that "I know better than the experts"; in many cases I don't, but to always just "believe the experts" seems naïve.

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lynx233y ago

My favourite example to illustrate this is the story of Louis Braille. He invented Braille because the tactile reading system taught to blind pupils was horribly slow and inefficient. Once he invested his 6-dot reading system, he had to teach it to fellow blind people in secret, because the institution he worked for condemned what the blind have apparently come up with. Yes, because the "experts" on teaching blind people were not even willing to consider anything these people were coming up with, because, apparently, this is a danger to the institutions wanting to claim expertness.

These stories happen all over the place, and still repeat themselves when it comes to how disabled poeple are treated in institutions today.

Still, some conservatives are still willing to wink anything through a self-proclaimed expert utters to the masses.

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