But I lack the expertise to even understand the testable evidence. As an example, I have a close family member who is expert in virology. I ask them questions about these matters in an effort to better understand the topic. But as hard as I may try I just don’t get it. There’s lots of more fundamental microbiological matters I would need to fully understand to even begin to grasp the complex matters I’ve had fruitlessly explained to me. So in that scenario should my inability to understand the data or even methodology invalidate the conclusions of the those can understand it? At some point you have to put faith in things.
You don't need to understand every technical nuance of every paper they write to understand a broad claim and a broad implication. Like I said, it depends on the scale of what they're claiming/demanding.
If an expert says "we need to shut down everyone's lives and put them under house arrest for months/years/forever because of a deadly virus," then they need to have very specific and testable predictions to back up that demand. For example, the expert from imperial college advising the UK government claimed that even with the lockdowns there would be a quarter of a million dead, and without there'd be at least half a million. Back in the real world, he turned out to be wrong, just as he was wrong when he made similar predictions about SARS and swine flu. I do not need to know the nuances of his data processing techniques and his model (which incidentally he refused to release) to know that the substantive of his claim was wrong.
If, on the other hand, he makes some very limited claim about the protein capsule surrounding the virus and recommends food factories install a particular type of filter most of them are using anyhow, then there's a lot less need for scrutiny and I'm not too worried about leaving the assessments of his claims to other experts.
Your second paragraph appears to be referring to current lockdowns to stop the spread of the virus. As I said before this is based on statistical modelling which is not really a hard scientific discipline. I do agree modellers should be able to make reasonable predictions and be held to them. I also think we are have a lot of comparatives with other countries now, and I don’t think the lockdowns are a good idea. But I can understand stats and obviously I can compare relatively similar populations who have adopted different methods. I think this is quite different from the necessity to put your faith in those more knowledgable than yourself in matters in which you have to admit your own ignorance or limitations.
If you admit ignorance of a particular topic you should not be granting a carte blanche to someone who claims expertise. This is the reason why professionals like doctors, lawyers and accountants only ever frame their professional services as "advice." They are explaining things to you and making a reasoned recommendation. You are never supposed to just admit defeat and do whatever they say without understanding it.
I think we have our wires crossed. Virologists study viruses. They don’t make predictions or anything like that (beyond obvious ones like a virus could and probably will mutate). They understand viruses on a level I can’t fathom, so I defer to their expertise on matters of viruses.
Epidemiologists are the ones who build the predictive models. They are informed by the virologists to a degree, but they’re informed by many other factors too. Epidemiologists are statisticians or data crunchers. I don’t defer to statisticians because models are always open to error and correction, and even the results themselves can be open to interpretation.
Same deal. It doesn't matter what the area of discipline is, my willingness to defer to experts depends on what they're demanding. If they want a lot then they're going to have to do a lot to convince me. If they tell me I can't understand them because I'm not an expert then that just makes me more suspicious.
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