David H. Freedman

David H. Freedman is the author of the 2010 book Wrong: Why experts keep failing us--and how to know when not to trust them and an article in the November 2010 issue of The Atlantic titled Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science.

Views
From a late 2010 email exchange, Freedman's thesis is that experts are frequently wrong and that it's very hard to know when to accord their statements credence, saying it's very "tough...to assess the reliability of knowledge...The book is mostly concerned with showing how unreliable expert knowledge turns out to be, and what makes it so. ... I also spell out means for assessing expert credibility...there are ways to do a better job of assessing expertise". He also says "I don't actually say in the book that any scientific pronouncements should be outright dismissed, and indeed I warn against doing so. ...  One of the ...categories [of findings we should grant more credence to] includes findings that emerge as a slowly building consensus of experts. I would put warnings on climate change into that category... a more-credible sort of finding....[though]this is far from iron-clad proof that it must be right."

When asked, "What sources ...[should the attentive reader] consider most credible for giving the big picture?", Freedman replied "The most credible sources...[are] those sources that are more or less in keeping with the long-term consensus, but that also take special troubles to spell out where this view may suffer ...[since] problems are...always there with all scientific and other expert findings, and the only question is whether the expert is aware of them and willing to be open and honest about them.", adding "We need our experts to be more like that physicist [in a joke, whose observation was limited to "There is at least one sheep in Scotland that is black on at least one side."]"

External resources

 * David Freedman's website