experts dont always get things right
They don't, but there are other forces that play that determine what you think the experts are saying. And I don't even mean "sinister, diabolical, shadowy" things at all...
in the 60's they said we were heading for a new ice age
in the 80's we were told in the Uk (by experts) that Human mad cow disease (BSE)was going to kill 110000 people per year in the UK withing the next ten years(1988 this was said) so far the most people killed by BSE in any year has been around 50
Let us say that there are exactly 2 scientists working on climate change (for simplification purposes). Scientist A thinks that maybe the planet is warming up, but he's not sure. Scientist B says that we're all going to die.
Which story do you think the media is going to report? It's
always the more sensational one. The research study that shows that nothing is going on, or things are like we thought they were, or that we think something is going on - that's not "news". That's not "interesting". You don't hear about that. But "we're all going to die?!?" - that gets reported.
I recently read an article about how this is a problem even in serious medical journals - studies that are "interesting" get published in the journals, while studies that aren't don't. So studies that hit some sort of statistical anomaly that are "interesting" and challenge previous thoughts and studies get published, while the studies that say "nope, everything is just like we thought it was" don't.
And once you add in the inability of the regular media to get basic facts right - I mean some guy who claims to be a scientist (heck, let's say he
is a scientist) says "We're planning on doing a study under the hypothesis that cats cause cancer", once the media gets ahold of it, can turn into "Study proves! that cats cause cancer!". I mean that's an extreme case, but surely you've noticed how you always see studies saying we're entering an ice age when it's been cold out, and studies saying there's global warming and things are getting warmer when it's been unusually hot out, right?
I'm just saying - when "experts" say we're heading for a new ice age, what we really mean is that the media has been saying we're heading for a new ice age. Whether the "experts" are really thinking this at all, or whether they found one guy who wanted media attention - who knows.
the milenium bug (Y2K) was according to experts gona couse havock to the world computeer systems at midnight 2000 (never happened but a lot of experts made money
)
other predictions by experts were wrong too SARS epidemic......BIRD flu...
and only in 2009 UK health experts predicted 90000 people would die from Swine flu they revised this down to 70000 ... massive error as less than 1000 died from swine flu that year
Ditto with the media - who do you think they're going to quote for their story, the guy who says maybe between 100 and 1,000 people will die at worst, or the "OMG we're all going to die!!!" guy? (sadly - it would definitely be great if the media was more accurate).
And then others are a case of "it would have been a disaster if we hadn't prepared for it, but we did - so...it was fine", like the Y2K thing. In Minnesota here we had a terrible freezing rain thing a month or two back. Absolutely awful - it kept raining, and the roads were like ice skating rinks. Nobody seemed to see it coming - the road crews weren't out until later, you didn't hear about it on the news, etc etc.
A couple of weeks later there was another huge storm. This time - surprisingly - nobody died in a car accident the entire storm. Even though it was just as bad or worse, since everyone knew it was coming and remembered how bad the last one was everyone was prepared for it - they drove slower, or stayed at home, etc etc.
so just remember this when you hear the term EXPERT
an EX is a hasbeen and a spurt is a drip under pressure
dont believe the hype
lol, everything I've said mostly agrees what that.
