Expert Advice
Written by The Square Parent Friday, 03 April 2009 00:00
Consult the experts, but don't rely on them. There are "experts" out there for everything. In many ways, this makes sense, with the advent of market segmentation and specialization, and the ease and volume at which information can be distributed.
But who are these "experts" exactly, and when are they most useful? For what topics is expert advice appropriate? It's surprising, if not outright shocking, how easy it is to become an expert in a given field. Even the term expert is highly ambiguous, and really doesn't require any specialized education or skill. Many times, all it takes is the good fortune, or taking the effort of being somehow quoted in a prominent media outlet, and suddenly, one is an expert. In other words, anyone can be an expert. This is not to be confused with a professional, in other words, an attorney or a doctor, but anyone can be professional. It follows that anyone can be a professional expert. All that needs to happen is have enough people use the same two words in a sentence in reference to someone.
News outlets are looking for "expert voices" all of the time. If the news outlets knew what they were talking about on a given subject, they wouldn't be looking for experts.
It seems at once odd and rational that expert opinion will be used in situations that were once completely natural, and didn't require any additional thought processes. Like parenting. It all started with Dr. Spock in the 1960's, and from there grew exponentially. The unfortunate truth is, the experts cannot explain far more than they can explain.
And from there, on the behalf of the kids, parents seek this stuff out, compare notes, theorize, stress about the little things, and become too caught up in the minutiae of daily life. What many of the experts seem to do is magnify a lot of latent neuroses, if not create new ones entirely.
The truth is, it's difficult to take very seriously anything you see in Parenting magazine, for instance, simply because many of the articles seem to be recycled re-hashes, slight variations on the same themes, and deal primarily in minutiae, to say nothing of the writing style. Come to think of it, how can any expert from 3,000 miles away know how your kid is behaving, likes, dislikes, or simple nature? They can't. So they deal in generalizations about small things, which anyone could do, really.
If they're right, it's because they're experts. If they're wrong, then chalk it up to "the variability of behavioral development as a function of time, experience, and other non-linear factors." This sort of reasoning seems to have less to do with expertise than with "the excrement of a certain large bovine species."
This is along the lines of how palm readers operate using the power of suggestion. They tell the client what the client wants to hear, are adept at reading the verbal and nonverbal cues, and then adjust accordingly. This is also how many businesses, including Parenting magazine and associated website work too, based on letters back to the editor, comments left on the site, blog postings, and other feedback, which they solicit in an aggressive manner.
This is the dynamic, but the dynamic is not driven by the businesses, but by the consumers. The demand for advice is tremendous. If you think about all of the time and energy that goes into finding the advice that one wants to find (as a body of information, it's very inconsistent), then setting about following it, then eventually discarding it, it all adds up. It includes the books, the websites (yes, just like this one), the TV programs, the blogs, listserves, magazines, classes, word of mouth, and pantomime.
Why does there need to be a theory to justify every little detail? There doesn't. It's quite simple, actually. Go with instinct. That's a gem that's usually sprinkled into any given piece of media on the topic, with a lot of other language sandwiched in to make it sound important or authoritative, and keep the reader coming back for more.
Most information over the years has been wrong. Recall the 1970s, when a prevailing theory was that if little girls played with the toys that boys liked, gender differences would disappear, because naturally, it was all about socialization. "Nurture!" they cried. This has turned out to be patently false. But then did people really need studies and theory to tell them that this was a false proposition in the first place? No, they had the luxury to believe what they wanted to believe, and after a lot of the aforementioned bovine excrement and thinly disguised (if at all) personal agenda, many people arrived back at square one.
Sort of.
Square one figures prominently in expert advice. Consult the experts, but don't rely on them.
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