Radio 4 Today programme had Michael Gove ranting about experts again. And they put reasonable Stephanie Flanders against him… simply no contest.
It is infuriating!
And nobody asked him who is mending brakes of his car and plumbing in his house – not to mention his body. I hope he consults experts.
He was saying that we have to demand facts from experts, rather than taking them on their word… but – he ignores the fact that that is exactly what experts do, in contrast to politicians – base their statements on facts. When he was asked about the £350m for NHS on the Leave bus, he said “we will see” – suggesting that this doesn’t require facts. And the difference between him and the experts is that he KNOWS that this number is false. So – he is not mistaken, he is lying.
He also said that now the responsibility lies with those in power – how convenient! He doesn’t have any power, so we should not blame him for anything.
I wish the Today program would bring somebody who could argue on behalf of experts.
The real difference between experts (I mean, real experts, not just people who pretend to be experts) and politicians is that the politicians’ job is to try to make us believe in something, experts’ job is to tell us what they think. A lying expert is no expert, a lying politician is.. – well … a politician.
Understanding of scientific process also tells you that experts are never really wrong. It is our (media, politicians etc.) interpretation of what they say that can be wrong. If a weather expert says there is 75% probability of rain tomorrow and then it doesn’t rain, the expert wasn’t wrong – it was the bloke who said “experts say it will rain”. Richard Faynman famously said that science is a technique of managing uncertainty. Unfortunately this is not convenient for political one-liners. But blaming people who provide expertise for the fact that we chose to quote snippets of it out of context is dishonest.
Gove also called the experts elite – I am thinking of some lonely researcher crunching numbers – to be called elite by Michael Gove – it is unreal!
