Orrorin’s Diary

I would like to continue with my post related to expertise. My question was then how we could define expertise and starting when, can we call someone an expert. I have been pondering on the matter and while looking for other people’s opinion and “expertise”, I found an interesting paper written by Bruce D. Weinstein.

Bruce, also known as The Ethics Guy, is a Ph.D., a professional ethicist and author of several books. In his paper “What is an expert”, he tries to define expertise and uses examples to show when we could consider someone being an expert. The most important aspect of his paper is that he argues there are two kinds of experts: those whose expertise is a function of what they know (epistemic expertise), or what they do (performative expertise).

A strong belief of mine is that the issue comes from the fact words like expert and professional have too many meanings and are not well defined. This means, we need a word defining someone with strong knowledge on a particular subject and another word for a person skilled in this particular matter.

A teacher in biology can be an expert in biology as a whole (making him a real master), or an expert in a particular field in biology like cell biology. Yet, this doesn’t make him a good pedagogue. Yes this person is a biology expert, but no, it is no teaching expert. Is he then a professional teacher? Technically yes, because it is his main or secondary career path and he is receiving pay. But is he a competent one…probably not.

After some thought, I believe we should redefine the three following words: expert, professional and practitioner.

Here are my definitions:

Expert: one who is recognized as a highly reliable source of knowledge on a particular matter or subject, capable of providing strong justifications and having the faculty to support significant research or decision-making processes.

Professional: one who is recognized as highly proficient in a particular field according to the rules of the practice and capable to share his know-how.

Practitioner: one who practices a profession and receives pay for it.

Both experts and professionals have to be recognized as such in order to be distinguished from the laypersons. This status does not depend on the amount of people recognizing it, but rather by the level of proficiency of the jury or a combination of both.

One can also be expert and professional at the same time for the same knowledge/skill (in this case we might look for a new word). The word expertise should be used indifferently for both expert and professional as it defines their level of proficiency/knowledge. As expertise in a subject requires time and dedication instead of sheer talent, we can consider that a professional’s expertise comes from his main career path and not just a hobby used for passing time. Though for some people hobbies tend to become more valuable than their actual job.

Now that we have definitions to work with, let us have a look further.

Bruce introduced the idea of skill levels in his paper; a bit the same way as it is done in Role Playing Games (RPG). Some of those games use well thought and developed profiling models with defined skill levels to which names are given. One of them would be Vampire the Masquerade/Requiem. This game revolving around vampires introduced a model with very interesting while simple aspects.

Every aspect of the played character is defined by dots; the same way people use stars today to rate a product or service. In the game, a normal human cannot have more than five dots, while superhuman vampires can go further. Those dots have the following names:

 @                        Novice
 @@                     Practiced
 @@@                 Competent
 @@@@              Expert
 @@@@@          Master

First interesting element is that the human average is placed at two dots and expertise at four. This means a practitioner has usually a level of two or three dots. Characters mainly gain extra dots with experience which can be acquired by practicing a particular skill or learning about it. Each game model has its own and unique way to develop a played character.

A second appealing aspect is that a skill is always combined with an attribute like intelligence, strength or dexterity. This means that someone with four dots in karate, who is very bright but not agile, might have a lot of knowledge about martial arts, but will not necessarily be able to beat a 3 dots karate-ka who is faster and stronger. 

The third and last attention-grabbing aspect is the fact that a player can try almost any type of skill but will have its difficulty raised. Whereas physical and social skills have a small rise in difficulty, mental skills are much tougher to manage. This makes sense as kicking is easier than doing CPR without proper knowledge.

Hereunder the latest character sheet of the game:

Let’s have a look back at our teacher. He can be an expert in biology, maybe also through research a professional in this field. On the other hand, he will be considered as a practitioner as a teacher.
This might give him for example 4 dots in biology and 2 in teaching. We could even divide biology into theory and practice, where he gets 4 dots as expert and 3 as professional.

So, where does all of this bring us?

While definitions make our life easier, we still have to find out when someone can be called an expert or professional. Criteria’s have to be chosen and a competent jury assembled in order to assess the expert/professional. Coming back to our web2.0 environment, it wouldn’t be that crazy to use feedbacks and ratings to assess the proficiency level of experts and professionals.

Part of the assessment could be done by the public and some by other specialists. A possibility would be to introduce a grading system like used today for the Eurovision. Experts will be graded on their studies, papers, research and decisions, while professionals will be graded on their production/construction, efficiency, artistic or physical achievement, etc.

Such a system might help us categorize practitioners and improve the status of people who deserve it. On the other hand, if not well managed, it can also yield a lot of discontents.

This however, is another story for another post.

Andrew Keen’s book “The Cult of the Amateur” created quite some fuss end 2007. I read it and found the main idea most intriguing. Keen’s view on the evolution of online “free speech” reflects into a transformation of culture into cacophony. The author suggests that the Internet and mainly Web2.0 tools have brought a wave of amateurism which is taking the world over, leaving but little room for the real expert to shine out. Or something like that.

I am not planning to wander around this topic; I believe that Lessig and his readers managed to bring some excellent points on this matter and the book as a whole.

What captivates me most is the abuse and vulgarization of the word “expert”.
Isn’t any one of us an expert in something?
I believe there is a lot of nonsense written and spoken due to this single word, leading to ill repercussions on the near future.

Simply put, an expert can be defined as a person with a high degree of skill in or knowledge of a certain subject.

Wikipedia’s definition is: an expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public.

Merriam-Webster’s definition is: one with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject.

Those two definitions are indeed very interesting. While the Merriam-Webster focuses on the skill & knowledge of the person, Wikipedia emphasizes the wide recognition as a reliable source.
This is probably a remnant of the Essjay case.

First of all, not all experts are looking for fame. Some prefer living a simple life with little social hassle. They’re not widely known by their peers, but does that make them less capable?
On the other hand, can an expert be even considered as an expert if none has seen and approved the results of his work?

When speaking about the Internet, Keen feels that the cosmic amount of blabbering on blogs or contributed by enthusiasts has a harmful effect on professionalism. In today’s social and economical environment, virtually anyone can become a virtual expert. Many young entrepreneurs are self-proclaimed experts who use their shammed identity to canalize energies around them. Furthermore, companies introduce virtually important mid-management levels as a mean to increase employee retention. This strategy has brought many workers to their level of incompetence. This, as a result brings frustration to the earnest or degenerative self-importance to the ambitious.

I’m personally very fond of self-branding techniques, though I don’t really use them that much. Due to the vulgarization of expertise, many marketers are self-proclaimed specialists with a huge baggage in their field of choice. Actually, they have no alternative since any kid with 3 years of experience is a marketing professional.

Now here comes a new word in play - a professional. What differentiates a professional from an expert? Is it the fact that a professional is supposed to be a skilled practitioner?

When looking at different definitions we can see that the emphasis lies on the practical part for the professional, whereas the expert not. I personally always thought of the expert to be a high leveled professional, but I might be wrong.

In everything we do, there is part of theory and part of practical experience. Can we call an academic who studied all his life but never “lived” the subject an expert?
What about a self-made man who has no real academic background?
Isn’t an expert supposed to be knowledgeable AND skilled?

Let’s get back to online information and user generated content (UGC).
When can we consider a journalist as an expert?
When he/she has 20 years of experience? When he’s writing for a big newspaper? After he wrote a book? As soon as he participates in many shows? Or once he won a Pulitzer price?

While reading a paper, can you guarantee the author’s level of expertise?
Another question would be: what is an expert journalist?
Someone who knows how journalism works or a journalist with a real expertise in a particular topic?
Those are two totally different things!

In a fast-paced world like ours, where flexibility became pivotal, real expertise has become a dwindling matter. Real experts are part of a dying breed in most fields.

With the loss of real masters, we not only risk to be deprived of a part of our identity and culture (which anyway has to evolve), but haven’t we already started replacing quality by the superfluous?

The Internet is an excuse and an opportunity for us to see that we need to bring additional and maybe unexpected changes to our society. We have to secure a sustainable knowledge transfer introducing change in the curriculum of this generation. As our society evolves into a service-based economy, manual labors and sciences are losing their appeal, moving more and more to the East. Companies require reducing costs in order to remain competitive and start using low quality products while developing and producing in low wages countries. Youngsters are sending millions of SMS a day, losing their touch with language. All of this has as effect that the Occident becomes lazy and loses interested in physical activities. It is to the government and the education system to prepare today’s youth for a future where real and virtual have to cohabit and expertise ensured.

What can we do about it?
We all need some time to ponder and I would like to start with 2 ideas:
1. Redefining the word expert
2. Professional blogger: The job of tomorrow

This however, is for a future post.