A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for a health pub on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), an affliction of honeybees that is decimating hives all over the country. Most people recognize this to be a serious environmental issue, although the usual Greens haven’t commented on it too much, other than to blame it on “evil” agribusiness practices. In fact, it may well turn out that one cause of CCD is the less frequent use of certain hive fumigants.
I got very little e-mail on the piece, but one was quite curious: The writer was very disturbed that a quote, attributed to Albert Einstein, and used in almost every recent article on this topic, might not be genuine. In the quote, Einstein warns mankind how much its fate is wrapped up with bees, who perform essential pollination.
As with many statements attributed to famous people, it is virtually certain that some will be apocryphal. The late movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn, for example, was well known for fracturing the language with his Goldwynisms, but there is little doubt that some were made up to sound like the genuine article. One of many that have always struck me as being too clever by half is:
“Color television! Bah, I won’t believe it until I see it in black and white.”
But the writer did not stop at simply doubting the veracity of the quote. He went on to discredit the statement on the grounds that Einstein was neither an entomologist nor botanist. He added that Rosie O’Donnell’s foolish remarks on the Twin Tower collapse can be ignored because she is not a structural engineer.
Of course, it was easy enough to defeat this nonsense. I reminded him that Einstein was a pretty smart guy, that bees really are important, and that even if a structural engineer from MIT had made the same observations as Rosie, they would still be balderdash. Moreover, by his logic, since he is not a recognized authority on quotations (such as Bartlett) then he has no standing to comment on Einstein’s alleged bee remarks.
My correspondent was a real proponent of credentialism, a modern malady that unduly emphasizes officially recognized qualifications over real world practical achievement.
The classic argument for credentialism will note that consumers are protected against charlatans, with the establishment of recognized medical schools and licensing requirements. However, this does beg a key question. At some point in the past, there was no such recognized medical specialty as psychiatry, for example.
Someone had to be the first psychiatrist, and had to declare himself the expert, offering no authority other than ipse dixit (He himself said it.) Beyond that, his credibility would be tested in the marketplace of outcomes. If he actually cured people, his new field would be accepted, and he would become the reigning expert. Later on, a system of credentialing could be built up, but at best this would be some sort of homogenization of current opinion, with a strong dose of politics.
Another problem with credentialism is that it can lead people into reversing cause and effect. While it is certainly possible that a duly recognized authority can proclaim the truth on a particular issue, it is hardly guaranteed. Likewise, Mr. Nobody could be prevented from offering a perfectly valid opinion, simply because he is not a recognized authority.
More than that, changing one’s credentialed status is not easy, and often requires a paradigm shift. Far too often, society or important institutions have a vested interest in the current credentialed elite to such an extent that the status can seemingly never change.
One cogent example is Paul Samuelson, a Nobel laureate economist and author of perhaps the most successful textbook in history. While Samuelson should not be assessed the sole blame for the sad finding that economics is the most universally disliked subject in the undergraduate college curriculum, his book—in its many incarnations—was always bigger, harder to read, and, it must be said, replete with silly wisecracks used to dismiss views opposed to his.
In addition to the dozens of more esoteric errors and fallacies that stayed in the various editions of his Economics, that have been frequently raised by others, there is the rather glaring matter of his predicting, right up to the fall of the Soviet Union, that the country would soon surpass ours in terms of per capita gross national product.
Another whopper involved his oft-used example of the lighthouse as the ultimate “public good.” According to Samuelson, lighthouses had to be provided by the government due to the inherent free-riding of those who could not be charged for the services being provided. Never mind that Samuelson always asserted this with no proof whatsoever. It took economist Ronald Coase to perform the simple historical research which revealed that private entrepreneurs had provided lighthouses for centuries.
As it happened, the (British) government only got involved because of property rights issues, and at a later point finally consolidated all lighthouses under its own monopoly, and then did it solely to reap the financial benefits formerly realized by the private entrepreneurs.
But my favorite Samuelsonism occurred in 1971, after President Nixon had announced the imposition of wage and price controls. Samuelson, along with just about every other economist had always maintained that these controls do not work, noting that it would be folly to try to defeat the market. However, he publicly supported the controls, his only quarrel with the program being that it did not contain enough federal spending.
A reporter, who no doubt had suffered through Samuelson’s book as a student, asked Samuelson to explain this absurd about-face. Samuelson replied something to the effect that what he wrote in his book is theory, and after all, we’re now talking about real life.
A better argument against mindless credentialism could scarcely be imagined.