MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Think Critically About the Wisdom of Experts

Some lessons about assessing the claims of people whose opinions seem unassailable.

Expert analysis informs the decisions we make as leaders and managers — and in our everyday lives. We can’t see red blood cells, but we trust scientists who say we have them and doctors who order blood tests to count them. We suspect that cognitive biases affect our choices, not because we have done the analysis ourselves, but because we believe social scientists who conduct experimental research. Much of our knowledge is ultimately garnered from the testimony of teachers, mentors, colleagues, and authors who write for publications like this one.

But we also live in a world where, almost daily, some expert’s previous certainty is discredited by new analysis. Diets once thought to be foolproof are ridiculed; management practices once decried are suddenly praised. So how should we treat the next piece of advice we get from a scholar or a consultant?