Available from State University of New York Press, at http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=53425
Paperback: US$21.95, ISBN 0 7914 2914 8
Hardcover:
US$22.50, ISBN 0 7914
2913 X
Confronting the Experts brings together six personal case histories of challenges to establishment experts. The authors tell why they questioned conventional wisdom, what methods they used, how they dealt with the experts' response, and what lessons they learned. Because the book shows how powerful groups can get their way by gaining the support of intellectual authorities and also how these authorities can be challenged, it provides insights into the issues of power, dissent, and social change
Included are Sharon Beder's research on sewage and how it helped to undermine the credibility of the Sydney Water Board; Mark Diesendorf's scientific and social critique of fluoridation; Edward Herman's exposition of the flaws in the establishment perspective on terrorism; Harold Hillman's questioning of the validity of standard methods used in biology, such as subcellular fractionation and electron microscopy; Michael Mallory and Gordon Moran's challenge to the orthodox interpretation of a famous painting in Siena, Italy; and Dhirendra Sharma's confrontation with India's nuclear establishment.
When I invited individuals to write chapters for this book, I asked them to give a personal account of how they went about confronting establishment experts. Surprisingly, there were few role models I could give them. There are, to be sure, a number of accounts attacking particular bodies of experts, such as Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring and Ralph Nader's classic Unsafe at Any Speed. Yet these works give little information about how the critic collected evidence, put it together and built a persuasive case. There is also a body of academic literature dealing with experts and expertise. But I find it of little use for a practical understanding of what is involved in mounting a critical attack against experts.
When I set about inviting contributors and case studies, I had several criteria. One was the existence of a powerful establishment position with recognised experts or expertise, such as the nuclear industry, orthodox medicine and mainstream political opinion. Second, I looked for critics who had devoted a major effort to attacking the experts rather than primarily presenting their own particular alternative position. Finally, I looked for cases in which the dominant experts had responded in a way which revealed the nature of the establishment with which they were linked. The contributors and case studies all satisfy these requirements well.
Sharon Beder deals with an engineering establishment that set the parameters for the Sydney sewerage system over many decades. Engineering establishments are incredibly influential in shaping the infrastructure of society: roads, rail, electricity, telephone, water, ports, computer networks and others. These are not just technical matters: there are questions of power and wealth involved, as well as the direct involvement of corporate and government vested interests. But these political and economic dimensions are usually hidden behind a facade of technical expertise which is seldom considered something for public debate. Beder investigated and exposed the operation of one such engineering establishment, helping to force it, kicking and screaming, into the public eye.
Mark Diesendorf tells about his challenge to the dental and medical experts who support fluoridation. Issues affecting people's health often provoke intense interest and debates, as testified by the prominence of diverse issues concerning cigarette smoking, cholesterol, AIDS, vitamins and cancer. Experts are involved in these and many other areas, and many of these experts are influenced by powerful interest groups, including pharmaceutical companies, industrial polluters, and the medical and dental professions. Promoters of fluoridation are an especially powerful and well-organized establishment. Diesendorf, one of the world's leading antifluoridation scientists, revealed much about this establishment through his potent challenge to it.
Edward Herman has challenged the scholars, commentators, politicians and government functionaries who have defined "terrorism" in a way convenient to Western governments. It is a simple fact that most organized killing in the world today is done at the behest of governments, either in wars or by repressive governments against their own citizens. This is forgotten or obscured when "terrorism" is defined as the action of small antigovernment groups or a few renegade governments. This is one example of how Western governments systematically shape popular perceptions of political reality and are thus able to escape proper scrutiny of their actions. Herman is an eminent scholar and also a committed partisan who has done as much as anyone to expose the double standards of the "terrorism" establishment experts - though this task is enormous, considering the power and ideological sway of national security establishments.
Harold Hillman started off just doing biological research and ended up confronting an enormously powerful biology research establishment. In spite of popular views to the contrary, scientific research is an incredibly conservative enterprise: innovation of particular sorts is welcomed, but challenges to fundamental principles are typically rejected out of hand. The reason is simple: many prestigious and not-so-prestigious scientists have an enormous stake in the prevailing set of ideas and directions. Hillman reveals much about the power of scientific research establishments in his challenge to long-held assumptions about standard methods for biological research.
Michael Mallory and Gordon Moran questioned the standard interpretation of a single art work and thereby came up against the full force of an art history establishment. To some, it might seem that not as much is at stake in the arts as in engineering or government policy, but the same processes apply. Art history is one facet of the more general process of creating and certifying ways of understanding human culture. Various "culture experts" have set themselves up as the authorities in this process, and it is as difficult to challenge orthodoxy here as anywhere else. What is at stake is primarily careers, status and cultural self-understandings. Mallory and Moran were led into a continuing engagement with an art history establishment which, through its reactions, revealed more about itself than about the art work in question.
Dhirendra Sharma challenged the czars of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in India and, as a result, was targeted for attack. In numerous countries around the world, nuclear technology has been supported by powerful forces in government and industry and opposed by citizen groups. A few experts have had the courage to speak out against nuclear developments and many of them have been attacked for doing so. In India, the task has been especially difficult because of the close personal links between the nuclear establishment and powerful figures in government and industry who had shown their capacity to silence dissent. Another difficulty is the lack of any tradition within India's scientific community of speaking out in the public interest. Sharma paid a serious price for his dissent, but even so he may have been fortunate that the price was not even higher.
I think that each of these critics has a strong case, otherwise I would not have invited their contributions. However, the point of the book as a whole is not to argue that each of these critics is correct and each of the establishments is wrong, but instead to provide insight into the process of confronting an expert establishment, including insight into the operation of the establishment and into successful and unsuccessful methods of mounting a challenge to it.
Reading these accounts, especially the stories of attacks against the critics, makes it tempting to think of expert establishments as unscrupulous conspiracies. Personally, I prefer a different interpretation. Within establishments, the dominant view is so taken for granted that a radically different viewpoint is virtually inconceivable and certainly has no credibility. This means that the critics are easy to dismiss as ignorant or dangerous or both; furthermore, the methods used against them are seen as necessary to protect a worthwhile enterprise. It has long been my view that nearly everyone has the best of intentions, and I believe that the stories told here are compatible with this view. The stories can be interpreted as struggles between groups and individuals each of which believes they are defending or promoting important truths. But some of the contributors may disagree with me on this!
A big challenge faces any expert writing for a general audience: how can the material be made understandable without sacrificing accuracy and rigor? This applies to an even greater extent to critics of experts. (Make no mistake, these critics are experts themselves. They simply disagree with the establishment position.) The views of the critics are much more likely to be unfamiliar to others, and therefore more space is needed for them to explain things, since less can be taken for granted.
As a result, some of these chapters contain difficulties for some readers. Those without scientific training may find parts of Harold Hillman's chapter difficult. Those without familiarity with the visual arts may find parts of Michael Mallory and Gordon Moran's chapter challenging. My advice is to not get stuck on difficult parts. There is plenty of valuable material even for those with no knowledge of the field. Technical detail has been kept to a minimum. For those specialists who want more information, plenty of references are cited in each chapter.
email: bmartin@uow.edu.au