[Air-L] authority, expertise and the open world

[Jeremy Hunsinger]

>
>
> There are people who have managed to become 'authorities' without
> going through the established mechanisms for doing so, but they are
> rather few and far between.
>
> --elijah
>

I think Elijah hit's something very key here.  There is a plurality of  
modes of publication for a plurality of audience types.   Two  
different spectrums for analysis of modes of publication tied to that  
are authority and expertise, one other that he indicates is popularity  
and one other implied by that are spaces of being a public  
intellectual.   If we thinking about the way we construct knowledge  
and we think about the publics in general, we can see that not all  
knowledge works for all people in all situations in all times.

One clear example of this is the Public Library of Science and its  
medical repository.  It does provide material, but to whom, and for  
what purpose?   There was a story floating around the net and I'm sure  
I can find it somewhere, where a doctor was reading the medical  
materials there in order to help his patient, however, the doctor  
lacked the appropriate level of statistical literacy and/or judgement  
to truly understand that the nuances of the argument indicated that  
for his case, the treatment that was being reported on was unlikely to  
benefit the subjects and in fact if he would have read later articles  
citing this article, he would have seen that this bit of knowledge  
about medicine was likely harmful.   Science and all writing, goes  
through many filters to reach different audiences, the doctor in  
question would have been better consulting with an expert or three in  
his field than reading articles, but alas as the story had it, that  
was not an option.   The question then becomes not only which papers  
should be public but which forms of expertise, for whom, for what  
reasons?

Open systems aren't a simple questions to say, 'Let's boycott', as  
that is what i would call throwing away the baby with the bathwater...  
there are far more systems and conventions that have arisen in  
publishing and elsewhere that have arisen to help people and prevent  
misunderstanding than I think many people are comprehending.   There  
is a time to boycott of course, I boycott Walmart and BestBuy for  
unfair labor practices as reported in media, other people boycott  
eating animals. Boycotts depends on your issue, in which spectrums of  
life you apply yourself and your political capital and the goal is to  
make those decisions in an informed way, but even then, it is a  
personal choice issue, and not necessarily one where you will find  
wide agreement.


jeremy hunsinger
Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research,  
School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu 
)

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