Fame Doesn't Make You Right (More Stories on the Death of Expertise)

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a fan of professional sports.  I would never be a member of a fantasy anything team and feel like I am hearing a foreign language when people discuss games and calls.  I do, however, like a few players.  Steph Curry was one of those players. 

Then, a few weeks ago, Steph appeared on a podcast and discussed, among other things, conspiracy theories.  In the discussion, he stated that he did not believe men had walked on the moon.  As a science teacher and life-long lover of NASA, my heart sank.  My students (many of whom really like conspiracy theories anyway) would come to class with a new argument - a famous person doesn't believe it.

To be fair, Steph has recently said that he was joking, and he did take the time to tour NASA's JPL and talked with Buzz Aldrin.  He apologized to astronaut Scott Kelley for the problems his statements have caused.  Kyrie Irving has done the same, apologizing to science teachers everywhere for his statements that he thought the earth was flat. 

Let's set aside for the moment that I teach the moon landing, love the history of our space program, and therefore, have an emotional connection to this particular topic.  Let's just say for a moment that the issue is a topic I have less passion for.  There's a larger question here.  Why is Steph Curry's opinion important?  Why do students think that his statement is a win in their column?  Why does his status as a basketball champion make him more right in their minds?  It's the same argument I had with them after Kyrie Irving's statement that the earth was flat.  If he comes out with an opinion about the rules of basketball, I would find that credible, but he has no expertise in science.  Even with their walking back their statements, the question I have is why we care.  Why does a basketball player's opinion on issues of science mean anything?  If a geologist comes out and says he thinks the earth is flat, that should make big news.  But why does it matter if a professional athlete believes it?

Please understand that I am far from saying, "Shut up and dribble."  We live in a country where the right to speak is our first right.  Everyone is truly entitled to their own opinion.  Steph and Kyrie are equally as free to have and state their opinions on any issue as I am.  But the equal right to an opinion does not mean equally valid opinions.

These two stories are not isolated.  They are reflective of many issues.

- I am facebook friends with a woman whose son is autistic.  She is an anti-vaxxer as a result of her son's condition.  She, a nurse, has had ample opportunity to examine the studies involving this issue.  She has read every report, all of which show no linkage between vaccines and autism.  They all show genetics and trauma during the third trimester of pregnancy as the primary risk factors.  She does not care.  She openly says she does not care.  She has said out loud and in writing, "I don't care what the CDC found.  I know what I know.  Autism moms can't stop. Won't stop."  She is openly saying that her expertise as the mother of one child is more valuable than the expertise of those who have researched thousands of children.

- When the product Airborne started being sold, many people recommended it to me.  I have no problem with this product.  It is essentially powdered Vitamin C, which we have known for decades supports your immune system.  I have a problem with the way in which people recommended it to me.  "You should use this.  It was invented by a teacher."  I'm not sure why that should matter.  If it were invented by an immunologist, I might be more inclined to care.  Why should the fact that a teacher invented it make me more inclined to trust it? 

- Even members of Congress, while performing an investigation, fall into this trap.  While asking Google executives about how Google functions, they follow up by disagreeing with them.  This video would be funny if it weren't so sad.  They have brought an expert into the room and asked them questions only to replace his reality with their own.

We have stopped caring about whether or not people know what they are talking about.  We have entered an age of populism about knowledge.  There are people who praise that, calling it the "democratization of knowledge."  I called it the Death of Expertise.  We no longer care if someone holds a degree in the topic at hand or has experience in it.   How did this happen?

I think it starts with our cultural worship of fame.  This goes back at least as far as the age of television.  It may go back farther, but I know that when celebrities started endorsing products on television commercials, it reflected the idea that their opinions mattered more than those of others.  Remember the "I'm not a doctor but I play one on tv" commercials.  They didn't hire a doctor because people were more likely to believe a famous person.  If you believe you don't worship fame, look at who you follow on social media.  At the time of this writing, Kim Kardashian has 59.3 million Twitter followers, compared to Buzz Aldrin's 1.36 million, and the fact that I have to use google to name any of last year's Nobel prize winners.  We absolutely worship fame over expertise.  The few scientists whose names you do know (Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson) work hard at maintaining their public presence and hire publicists to do so.

Speaking of Twitter, I think social media has contributed to this problem as well.  A few decades ago, you would know the opinions of people you knew well and people who were interviewed on the news (and before 24-hour news killed good journalism, you could believe they had taken the time to seek a credible expert).  Social media has given everyone a megaphone, and while you have some ability to cultivate your echo chamber by who you choose to follow, you are exposed to the opinions of far more people than you used to be.  All opinions lie side by side in the age of social media (with the edge to your side if you are famous, of course).   Because they are all right there together, our brains process them as equally valid.  We get to choose who we will agree with, regardless of their credibility.

I know this has gotten long, and my blog is supposed to be about education, so let me wrap up by speaking to teachers.  This perfect storm of cultural cynicism, fame worship, social media leveling everyone, and some high profile falls of authority figures has led to this, and we need to do what we can as teachers to model better for our students.  We need to openly care more about expertise than fame.  We need them to see that we seek out credible sources; they should never hear us say that we "read something somewhere" without caring about who we get information from.  We need to teach them to seek out credible information (including but not limited to their sources for research papers). 

We live in a sea of "information" that is a mix of good an bad, credible and ridiculous, worthy and unworthy of our time.  We, as teachers, cannot be passive.  We must act as lighthouses on this sea, pointing them to the good and credible and worthy and teaching them to recognize it.