I struggle to understand how “I am no scientist” became the requisite credential to dismiss the consensus understanding of those who are. Perhaps this issues inevitably from the decaying carcass when a culture elects to assassinate expertise. Whatever the reason, just such a meme seems now to prevail. I am fairly confident that the originator of the term “meme”– defined as a unit of cultural transmission — and until recently, endowed professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University, Richard Dawkins, would share my misgivings and consternation on the topic.
Members of the U.S. Congress routinely invoke, “Well, I’m no scientist,” just as they are about to repudiate the contentions of those who are. This has been the constant and alarmingly effective impediment to climate change action, thankfully overcome at last, at least partly, in Paris — although whether enough so, and whether in time, remain to be shown. The tactic, however, is nondenominational, and is being applied now to equal effect as an assault on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans which, as fate would have it, have enormous implications for climate change, along with much else.
What is especially worrisome about this particular adulteration of this already dubious meme is the patina of obfuscating hypocrisy it has acquired. In the latest incarnation (just the right word, given the beef industry’s apparent involvement) of the “I’m no scientist” ploy, Congress has implied that the recommendations of scientists about diet and health are potentially not scientific enough and require the review of, wait for it: scientists. Because, after all, the members of Congress who have concluded that the process wasn’t scientific enough in the first place are, ostensibly, no scientists.
This all begs an obvious question: On what possible basis can the members of Congress who tout their ignorance of science as an honor badge possibly know that the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee‘s report uniquely requires another round of scientific review? The answer, of course, is that there is no such basis. In its place is a flagrant array of ulterior motives, mostly well-publicized.
In the specific case of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s report, the opposition tipped its hand with its direct frontal assault on the salience of sustainability. How can the sustainability of recommended dietary patterns be a divisive issue? Are there, truly, parents and grandparents in the world who hope that the recommended dietary patterns for health and vitality will be available for us but not for our children and grandchildren?
The meanest logic argues, at a time when the excess of global demand over sustainable supply is ever more vivid, that dietary recommendations inattentive to this matter are the product of delusion, denial or rapacious greed. Yet, under the influence of concentrated lobbying, Congress advised the federal agencies involved to expunge sustainability from dietary guidelines in the United States, and it was done. So go ahead, and eat your children’s food along with your own; Congress says it’s OK.
The current assault on the content of the same report is a product of the same forces. The call for additional scientific scrutiny has nothing to do with respect for science, or interest in its highest standards. It is a charade perpetrated by the detractors of science.
Why, though, if there really is consensus among genuine scientific experts on the fundamentals of healthful eating, should the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee report be vulnerable to such aspersions? Paradoxically, the vulnerability resides in the very nature of “expertise.”
Most of us can stand in a clearing and see the surrounding forest, and certainly no special gift is required. Only an expert, however, can catalogue the intimate arcana of some particular tree rooted in that wood. Such depth of knowledge famously comes at, or perhaps merely comes across as, the expense of breadth: the failure to see the forest for the trees. Or, if you prefer, astounding perspicacity for details, conjoined to a proclivity for missing the elephant in the room.
With the exception of the occasional idiot savant, most experts are probably as cognizant of the forest or elephant as the rest of us. But what makes them expert is not the overlap of their knowledge with ours, or even with one another’s, but to the contrary — their uncommon knowledge. Expertise is all about knowledge and insight at the frontier of understanding.
Frontiers are not pushed back by following well-blazed trails. By definition, frontier forests are mostly untracked. We must find our way through them tree by tree, and this is the work of bold explorers. Bold explorers in the domain of understanding are experts. Naturally, then, experts are always walking through, and talking about, terrain that is poorly catalogued, and partly unknown. That is the very mandate of expertise.
As a result, experts are distressingly good at seeming to disagree even when they agree. Partly, this is because of how we frame our questions, often in the form of either/or choices. Partly, this is because of how experts are programmed to reply. Consider again the frontier forest, and the best way through it, shown schematically this way:
The large expanse of the forest is familiar to expert and nonexpert alike. The smaller expanse of frontier is well and commonly known by experts only. But if each of four experts is asked for the best way into and through that frontier, the likely responses are mutually exclusive routes one through four. This, in turn, may make it seem as if the experts disagree about everything, but only because the topic of interest is consigned to the small area of greatest uncertainty, and dissent. The apparently great divide between route one and route four, however, says nothing to refute the common expanse of not only the forest, but even its frontier. The very nature of expertise invites preferential focus on areas of disagreement. We look on passively as politicians exploit and distort this trait to subvert science — at our collective peril.
Speaking of the collective, we must concede that consensus does not, by itself, determine what is right. The fact that a large group of people, even experts, agrees provides no guarantee of truth. At one point in our history, everyone agreed that the sun revolved around the earth, and everyone was wrong. Every ardent adherent to any given, major religion presumably thinks that the vast numbers of equally ardent adherents to some alternative, major religion — along with their “expert” theologians — are wrong about the fundamental truths of our existence. And those of us who are not so adherent suspect that all members of all such groups are comparably wrong. The pedigree of consensus is far from unassailable.
Departure from consensus, however, is rather less reliable. Occasionally in history, the lone, renegade genius sees a truth overlooked by all others. These are names we tend to know — Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin — for the very reason that they are exceptions, not rule.
Always rare, iconoclastic revelations are generally that much more so now that our greatest progress is courtesy of the scientific method. The advance of science is much more about increments than epiphanies. When the aggregation of incremental insights and expert consensus align, the understanding engendered may not be absolute, but it tends to be very robust. When the hypotheses intrinsic to that understanding are tested and withstand scrutiny, the resultant “truths” are about the best those of us consigned to a realm of imperfect knowledge can get.
What we understand about diet and health falls into just such space. There is forest, frontier and expert forays at the very fringe of understanding. Most of the expanse is buttressed by a vast aggregation of evidence, and a prevailing — if mostly unrecognized — consensus.
As for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, they do, indeed, have a rather dubious history — but not because of the deficiencies of science. Rather, as has been made rather famous, the process of guideline generation has always been subject to political corrosion. As a result, some of the best nutrition scientists in the world have serious misgivings about the dietary guidelines and the process that generates them. This is despite the fact that some of the best nutrition scientists in the world are directly involved in the process that generates them.
The trouble is, simply, that the scientists do not have the final word. Politicians do. Congress is now pretending to have similar concerns, but actually, their meddling is the problem, not the solution.
There are good arguments for divorcing the entire dietary guideline process from federal agencies entangled in politics, tied to industry and prone, at least indirectly, to lobbying. There are concerns that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee profile may reflect not only merit and expertise, but also the effective campaigning of various special interests.
The more immediate and far greater concern, however, is the failure of politicians to respect the scientific verdict. A sound verdict was reached. Some powerful, profit-driven forces dislike it, in whole or in part. So now Congress, invoking the rarefied “we are not scientists” credential, has presumed to judge that a retrial is in order.
The Paris Accord, whatever its ultimate efficacy, shows that the truth eventually prevails over politics as usual. We may hope the same will eventually be true of diet, for the health of people and planet alike. Indeed, an effort in which I am privileged to play a role has that as its very agenda.
In the meantime, when we hear “I’m no scientist” as a prelude to some assertion about science, it should be an invitation to roll our eyes, not roll over for the status quo. Science too intimately suffuses our daily routines for any of us to doubt the prowess of its methods. We are constant beneficiaries of it. I am using the products of science to write this; you, to read it. The products of science fully rival magic in their marvels, but are instead the endowment of methods and mechanisms we know and understand that prove themselves to us every day. The methods and mechanisms of politics are rather more suspect.
There is, along with a massive consensus, genuine dissent among experts about the details of dietary optimization. That is as it should be. Congressional meddling with the dietary guidelines, however, has nothing whatever to do with such legitimate discord. Orchestrated by those who by their own confession are unqualified to judge science, it is a diversionary tactic.
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Diet, Discord and Diversionary Tactics originally appeared on usnews.com