Chapter Five
There might be more to disinformation than these features, but these are perhaps the most important points. A given disinformation campaign might have only some of these features, not all of them. But the more of these features you think are present in a given piece of propaganda, then the more you may want to engage your reasonable doubt. Another thing you can do is go to a fact-checking agency, to see if any professional research has been done on the topic. Most such agencies can be reached on the Internet, and some publish their findings in newspapers and magazines as well as in their own web sites. Here is a short list of them: • FactCheck.org (USA)
5.8 Doubting experts and professionals.
for one’s own self; and in which the financial return is not the accepted measure of success. 15
We might criticize this definition by saying that its emphasis on service to others renders it too narrow. There might be lots of experts who practice their profession in order to benefit themselves. Yet the point that Brandeis was trying to reach was that such service to the public is an essential part of what makes a professional person trustworthy. Let’s define an expert here as someone who is very knowledgeable in a particular subject area or field, more so than most other people are, due to some combination of experience and specialized training. Experts tend to have:
• PolitiFact.com (USA) • FullFact.org (United Kingdom) • Snopes.com (primarily for memes and urban legends)
• A lot of formal education and training from college or university, or some other reputable institution relevant to their field.
5.8 Doubting experts and professionals
• A lot of experience. Several years at least; and the more, the better.
Given that we don’t always have the time or the opportunity to figure out things for ourselves, we have to rely on experts at least some of the time. This is natural and normal, and not a problem. But we must still decide when it is rational to trust an expert, and when it is rational to not trust one! And in some specialized fields, if you are not a professional in that field then you are probably not in a very good position to judge whether the expert has done a good job. It is also sometimes the case that professionals and experts are in a position to harm as well as to help their clients. So, how do you know who is an expert, and who is not? And how do we decide whether a given expert can be trusted? One of the most frequently quoted definitions of a ‘profession’ was written in 1914 by United States Supreme Court judge Louis Brandeis, who wrote that a profession is: ...an occupation for which the necessary preliminary training is intellectual in character, involving knowledge and to some extent learning, as distinguished from mere skill; which is pursued largely for others, and not merely
• A decent reputation among other experts in the same field, and among clients. • A history of professional accomplishments.
Yet even when it is appropriate to call someone an expert, there are still circumstances in which it may be prudent to doubt what that person says. Here are some examples: • The person is speaking about a topic outside of his or her actual training and experience, and yet claims to be an expert in that field. • There are decent reasons to believe that the expert is inappropriately influenced or biased (for instance, by the corporation that funds his or her research), or involved in a conflict of interest. • When various experts disagree with each other about the matter under consideration.
Regarding the second point: Many academic science journals now encourage their contributors to put a ‘conflict of interest statement’ in their published articles, to help allay concerns about whether corpo-
15 Louis Brandeis, Business - a profession (Boston, USA: Hale, Cushman, & Flint, 1933), pg. 2
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