Quote Originally Posted by Spartan Tartan View Post
As was said earlier, trust is important when discussing expertise. There are several ways to establish trust--one example is tobget a professional society credential. Another, for XMTS and other less professionally rigid constructs, I like to see who says what and evaluate a person's expertise by what they say and how the behave/interact.

Another point which I have not yet seen is the matter of relevance. Not picking on PhDs, but if your field of study is mathematics then your expertise is not relevant to a sociology person. Not directly anyway.

Moreover, relevance is from MY point of view. If your expertise is not consistent with my world view, then it is not relevant. So, in that regard, TO ME, one is not an expert. No matter their credential or establisged experience, if Ibdo not aspire to be like that person then their expertise is not anything I am concerned with.

Correct me if I am wrong, but a dissertation board consists if experts in a particular field assessing a new potential experts contribution, no? Put a non-related expert on that board and one could argue all those years if research were wasted...at least not appreciated by the "right" expert.

I agree with a lot of what you say. Trust, based on experience, is necessary in order to accept that a person knows what he is talking about, or that what he is saying is a t least relevant to the topic at hand. Creating a new credentialing process to provide credence to a profession is not really worth the effort. i worked in two professions that tried that, and in the end, the credentials did nothing to convince the nay sayers that the professions were real.

That said, a PhD in mathematics does not indicate that an individual has any expertise in sociology, but he might have picked up a lot of expertise through life experience.

If you have a reason, even gut instinct, not to trust someone's opinion, then you probably should not trust them. Agendas can come into play in a discussion as much as facts and theories.

Sadly, I think we often accept the expert who most often says what we want to hear.