The Risks of Relying on Authority: When Experts Speak Outside Their Field

Whenever we listen to people and oftentimes they can be credentialed authorities like a legitimate PhD. The example I've often used is Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He's a renowned astrophysicist. Now I'm at the point now where I am very wary of anybody purports to be a science communicator across a broad spectrum of stuff outside of their domain, their area of expertise, their area of education. So Neil seems to be a very credible authority on astrophysics and I'm comfortable saying that. But then he's wandered far afield and he's, you know, in various domains said very pseudo scientific or completely like nonsensical things. He has in places talked about nutrition. And of course this is the thing, you tend to trust these authorities and what they say because they sound very sure, convincing they have the authority. But then all of a sudden they start talking about something you actually have high level know, knowledge and education in like nutrition and you go, wait a second, that's blatantly false. And so he was talking about carb insulin hypothesis and you know, in the context of fat loss, I can't remember the exact quote, but he was very much purporting that the carb insulin hypothesis was the thing and calories didn't matter so much. And I'm like, that's objectively false. And yet you are an authority speaking way outside of your area of expertise. And I'm not interested in going, oh. I also don't believe in throwing out everything about Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He's just a famous example here. It's like I would recommend that people use it as, as a illustration, listen to him about physics but question anything else that he says. And there are times.