All-purpose expert - not

[oursin]

I'm intrigued by the phenomenon whereby, because I have demonstrated that I am reasonably knowledgeable in some area, people immediately assume that I must know about related (or even completely unrelated) area in some authoritative way. (Arising from question session after presentation I did at work yesterday.)

Uh - no.

Meedja people are particularly bad for this, I find - having got someone there to be a Nexpert, by god, they are going to squeeze as much out of them as possible, because they've already established them as a Nexpert, so what they say about something on which they're as well-informed as anybody who has ever read a book on the subject garners as much cred as the stuff they've done srs rsrch on.

This is somewhere on the amusing/annoying borderline, but of course it has rather more problematic repercussions when you get, e.g. Nobel scientist in one field getting coverage and even kudos for his (the examples I can think of are all his, am I entirely surprised?) views and profound thorts on some field well removed from his own. (The example I think of here is William Shockley, who got the Nobel for co-inventing the transistor, but is probably best known for his involvement with the 'Nobel Sperm Bank' and his views on race, eugenics, etc, but James D Watson, I'm also looking at you.) This notion of the all-purpose expert who no everything there is to no is troubling.

Comments

[lalouve.livejournal.com]

I get that to some extent, too, possibly aggravated by the fact that my field is rather wide, so no one udnerstands why it couldn't span even more. I especially have absolutely no expert opinion on the troubles besetting today's youth just because we read the same books...