👠 Experts don’t know what they don’t know, either
1. A new word
I tweeted a thread yesterday. I won’t copy it here, but for those of you who haven’t read it, please do:
My favourite thing about this term is where it came from. Ultracrepidarian, “beyond one’s shoes,” was coined in the 19th century (some smackdown between English literary critics), in reference to a story related by Pliny the Elder. From the Wikipedia page:
… a famous comment purportedly made by Apelles, a famous Greek artist, to a shoemaker who commented on a mistake in the depiction of a sandal, which Apelles duly corrected, but who then presumed to criticise other aspects of his painting. The Latin phrase "Sutor, ne ultra crepidam," as set down by Pliny and later altered by other Latin writers to "Ne ultra crepidam judicaret", can be taken to mean that a shoemaker ought not to judge beyond his own soles. That is to say, critics should only comment on things they know something about.
In this pandemic, they’ve popped everywhere, and I mean everywhere. To quote François Jost, who teaches semiology and media analysis at the Sorbonne, we are living through “the reign of ultracrepidarians.”
2. Why does this happen?
A little knowledge of anything outside one’s field can be dangerous. When we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of lives, as is the case with this pandemic, it can be straight-up lethal.
For example, epidemiology is a vast field, with dozens of subspecialties. Some develop tools to gather the data, others build contagion or mortality models. Some are interested in the technical modes of transmission (virus? bacteria? droplets? sexual? airborne? fomites?), and others on how behaviour and socioeconomic factors affect the spread of disease. It goes without saying that the way you study measles is not the way you study obesity, which is not the way you study AIDS (I said it anyway).
In a pandemic like this one, we’ve had to scramble to figure out what we know. I saw it in my job as many of the experts who write for us dropped everything they were doing to figure out all possible aspects of Covid-19. But that’s just it. It takes work.
Of course, everyone’s entitled to their opinions. There are plenty of things on which a scholar’s word can’t be the last. We all know how it feels to understand something intellectually without connecting to our lived experience, the same way we may know something in our bones for which we have seen no research.
But no one is immune: when we know a little, we oftentimes don’t have the full measure of what we don’t know. I’m sure many of these people have good intentions, and the media relate their stories in good faith. So we need to be vigilant. As we muddle through the constant onslaught of information, it matters that we make a distinction between what’s opinion and what’s fact. We need clarity on the angle from which someone is speaking. And we all have to bear in mind that quacks come in all shapes, including (and perhaps especially) white, male, serious-looking, and with the right letters behind their names.
How to use this: make it a habit to hunt for ultracrepidarians. Google that name. Dig deep, and do not stop at fancy titles or prestigious institutions. Google Scholar can be helpful. Search them in there and see if they’ve published anything about the topic you’re reading about. Whenever possible, also search “What’s the scientific consensus on…” Stay open and ask questions.
🍞 A live event for bakers
For the lot of you who’ve dabbled with starters, this is one live event you won’t want to miss (I’m producing it, too!). Did you know that each starter is different and that you can help researchers in microbiology by sending them a bit of yours?
… where conventional breads rely on a single species of baker’s yeast — the microbial equivalent of a cattle ranch — sourdough is more like the Serengeti, a diverse ecosystem of interacting yeasts and bacteria. The nature of that ecosystem, and hence the flavor of the bread, is a profound expression of a particular time and place.
We’ll have three experts, including Karl “The Sourdough Librarian” de Smedt, talking about everything you’ve always wanted to know about this 12,000-year-old breadmaking technique.
Thursday 15 of October
9:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST
How to use this: it’s free! Register here, even if you can’t make it. That way we can send you a link to the recording. And send your questions ahead of time, too!