experts & expertise | Jean Goodwin

Browsing All posts tagged under »experts & expertise«

What is ‘responsible advocacy’ in science? Good advice.

July 14, 2012

"Responsible" advocacy is still advocacy. To be good, it should be zealous. But zeal undermines scientific authority. So advising, not advocating, should be the speech act of choice.

Good reasons for trusting climate science communication

July 14, 2012

Scientists can earn trust--but only by making themselves vulnerable.

Accounting for the appeal to the authority of experts

July 14, 2012

Experts have methods for earning the trust of lay audiences--but using their authority is costly. I explain how.

Trust in experts as a principal-agent problem

July 14, 2012

Principal-agent theory can help us understand some of the reasons we may have for distrusting experts--and how that distrust can be addressed.

Dilemmas of expertise in sustainable agriculture

July 14, 2012

What do four eminent experts in sustainable agriculture think of their roles in policy-making? And what communication strategies do they understand they have to fulfill those roles?

The authority of the IPCC First Assessment Report and the manufacture of consensus

July 14, 2012

"Consensus" as the strategy selected by scientists associated with the IPCC--a poor rhetorical choice.

Maslin v. Morano

July 14, 2012

In a close textual analysis of a short debate, I show how an outstanding scientist is unable to simultaneously exert his authority and to advocate effectively--especially when up against an outstanding advocate on the other side.

The authority of Wikipedia

July 14, 2012

We don't trust Wikipedia because we're confident that the collective of editors know stuff. We trust Wikipedia because the Wikipedians love it.

When science goes public: From technical arguments to appeals to authority

July 14, 2012

Even under favorable conditions, evidence-based technical arguments become transformed into appeals to expert authority when they enter the public sphere.

Accounting for the force of the appeal to authority

June 1, 2011

Goodwin, Jean. (2011). Accounting for the force of the appeal to authority. In F. Zenker (Ed.), Argumentation: Cognition and Community. Proceedings of the 9 th International Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA), May 18-21, 2011. Windsor, ON . As appeals to expert authority shift from “fallacies” to “argument schemes,” argumentation […]