Should you believe the information you’re being told?

Before taking an expert’s recommendation, ask yourself: does the expert make sense? Do they make contradictory claims — do they say one thing and then do the opposite?

How can you decide to trust what an expert says? Here are some questions you can ask:

• How do they respond to criticism by other experts? Are they willing to change their mind or admit that they were wrong? ¹ Do they seem to care about finding the right answer to a question or are they more interested in proving that their answer is the best? 2
• Do they show signs of social or personal bias?
• Do they go against scientific consensus without justifying their views to other scientists?
• Do they use inflammatory rhetoric, exaggerate the importance of their claims, or engage in science hype? ^{3, 4, 5, 6}

Additional Resources

1. Why we trust experts – even when they admit they don’t know the answer The Conversation
2. Science feedback, fact checking site.
3. Spinning the Genome: Why Science Hype Matters
4. Ethics of Hype and Bias in Science
5. Exaggerated headline shock
6. How demagogues wield social media