Can We Trust Experts?

[endicom]

Townhall
Walter E. Williams
July 25, 2018

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers predicted that if Donald Trump were elected, there would be a protracted recession within 18 months. Heeding its experts, a month before the election, The Washington Post ran an editorial with the headline "A President Trump Could Destroy The World Economy." Steve Rattner, a Democratic financier and former head of the National Economic Council, warned, "If the unlikely event happens and Trump wins, you will see a market crash of historic proportions." When Trump's electoral victory became apparent, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned that the world was "very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight." By the way, Krugman has been so wrong in so many of his economic predictions, but that doesn't stop him from making more shameless predictions.

More... https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2018/07/25/can-we-trust-experts-n2502775

[Maj. Bill Martin]

No.  We absolutely cannot trust experts.

I spent way too many years deposing and cross-examining experts, seeing them on the exact opposite sides of cases giving directly contradicting opinions, etc., to simply trust them on faith because they're "experts".  The level of diligence and knowledge required to test their opinions properly, not to mention the opportunity to question them under oath as to the basis for their opinions, is something the vast majority of voters simply don't have.  And what happens is that the media promotes those expert opinions that are most consistent with their personal agendas.  So what most people really get exposed to is not the opinion of some neutral expert, but rather than opinions of the people who promote that particular expert.

[Sanguine]

Some we can; some we can't.

[Wingnut]

There are no experts.  Just tarot card readers trying to hoodwink the public into thinking they really know what will happen.