Translator: Vladimír Harašta Reviewer: Denise RQ
I'm a researcher.
And as it often happens,
I'm asked to express my opinion on different issues.
I'm doing my best in saying what my opinion is.
I'm acting as an expert.
Probably you know this role,
all of you can be occasionally in this role.
Maybe not right now, maybe not right here,
but everybody can find a field of expertise they are good at.
And since you are a public expert,
certain demands are put on you.
Simply, a set of expectations is something what's present;
you have to fulfill those expectations.
I'll name them.
Experts have to think differently,
that's why they are experts - - you have to be different, of course -
all the available information, what's present, have to be used,
and it has to be used without any errors or biases.
Then you have the third issue you have to deal with,
and that's that you have to provide certainty.
I mean, if you are asking an expert about something
what we are willing to hear,
that's a certain answer
we want to live a life
which is definitely something certain we can rely on.
It happened once that I was involved in a study project,
and what we did was to study automobile drivers,
and particularly, we were interested in non-written traffic rules.
That's something that we all are familiar with if we are driving.
We have to follow not only the formal, written rules;
there is a set of something that's called unwritten rules.
We had two groups of participants.
One group consisted of normal, average car drivers as we all are.
Another group was formed by driving instructors.
And driving instructors - we name them experts.
They are experts, they know better what we expected.
We expected that those driving instructors will think differently.
They are experts, they have to know something better
in comparison to us normal, average drivers.
And now I'll show you my favorite findings
we got out of this study.
What do we have here?
We got something what impends driving safety,
for instance, speeding - approximately 10 km/h -
that's something bad, that's not safe, OK?
And then we had something positive, you know, this positive side of the graph.
For instance, signaling to switch on headlights
if someone had forgotten to do it.
Well, you might say, "You had two groups
whose answers are represented in this graph."
Well, I might say, "I forgot, and I didn't know.
Let's check what the next graph looks like."
Oh, that's the next graph -- looks pretty similar, right?
I do know the first one came from normal drivers,
and this second one came from the experts.
They're almost the same, you are right.
Here you can see those graphs on the same slide.
They are almost the same with very minor, very slight differences.
Could we say that driving instructors are not experts?
No, I wouldn't dare, they are experts.
Yet occasionally, experts simply think in the same manner
as we, laypersons do.
Recently, in a news portal, I spotted a short report on a study.
The basic idea of the study was to find out what are the risk factors
which make our traffic unsafe.
There are several interesting findings, but probably the most interesting,
or I'd say the most attractive, from my perspective,
was that a substantial risk factor is
to drive an Audi.
What does it say?
Should we be afraid
of those driving cars by this brand?
Well, I wouldn't say so.
If you are an Audi driver,
it's not necessarily to switch to another brand.
You could do, if you wish, but it won't change much
in regard to safety issues.
The point is that this is a fairly common error among researchers
who forget to correct the data
to the total amount of something.
In this case, to the total amount of Audi cars within Latvian society.
The number of Audi cars on the road in Latvia is pretty large,
and because of that, we may get such an impression.
A simple correction, and we get different results.
What did we want to get from the experts in this case?
That they would be good or at least better
at using of all the available information.
And not to be prone to errors or biases as we all are.
We all are human beings, and it's pretty human to error,
it's pretty human to be caught in different kinds of biases.
Another story:
during the final stage of the World War II,
London was heavily bombed
by the so-called V1 bombs.
Of course, Londoners needed certainty.
They needed a safe place to be. They needed a shelter.
What could they do?
They needed an expert piece of advice, of course.
And one of the possibilities that experts could do, and they did it
- a very nice and simple solution - was to draw maps.
Here you have a map of London,
and those spots represent the places
where bombs hit London.
Is there any solution?
Could we find safer places?
Well, there is a solution,
or at least experts during that time supposed that there was.
If you simply draw two lines, one horizontal and one vertical,
you can find this upper right corner
where you have far fewer of those bomb spots.
And probably it turns out that that's a safer place.
You can find a shelter there.
It seems fairly easy to be an expert.
Was it the right solution?
A short answer is no, but I can give you also a longer one.
Those two lines gave no more than an illusion
of a safe quadrant, so to say.
I could draw two other lines, diagonal lines,
and in this case, you don't get what you've expected.
You don't have any safe place anymore.
Simply by drawing two lines you can show
that certainty, in this case, is not available.
And that was expected from the experts.
After what I've been saying,
is it possible to list qualities of a real or of a good expert?
A short answer would be yes,
at least to some extent.
I'll name a few of their qualities.
First of all, experts have to challenge,
they have to challenge an audience
and very often, they have to challenge themselves.
They have to provide an alternative,
a hypothesis, alternative explanations,
and that's something what we very often forget.
The point here is that what we are looking for
is a kind of knowledge
what we usually call "what to think."
And you can say, "That's a fish!"
That's what we are willing to get from the experts.
But on the other hand,
it's much, much more productive
to ask for the knowledge
what could be described as "how to think."
And that's the fishing rod -
- you might be asking why I have it --
you know, it was very convenient to point to the right places in the graphs.
But you know the saying,
"Teach a person to fish,
and you'll give him or her food for a lifetime."
That's the point.
Of course, occasionally, we have to pay
for this way of thinking with our certainty.
We get knowledge by paying with certainty.
But it's well worth this price.
Thank you.
(Applause)